Built-in delivery box system goes live
Home Delivery Access, the company behind Britain’s first built-in, refrigerated home-delivery drop-off box, is now offering a selection of solutions for unattended home delivery under Delivery Point branding. Its offerings were on display at the e-delivery expo in London in February.
Products range from built-in boxes to free-standing units and much simpler systems giving coded access to garages, sheds or outhouses. “Delivery-point farms” (banks of secure lockers for offices or apartment blocks) are also envisaged.
HDA has already supplied a multi-temperature cabinet to Laing Homes, which has built it into a new house in its upmarket Richmond Heights development at Richmond, Surrey. The house has now been sold.
Built-in boxes of this kind allow delivery drivers to insert food or other goods from outside the house into lockable ambient or temperature-controlled compartments. The householder can later retrieve the goods from a separate access point indoors.
The robust, built-in stainless-steel units are targeted mainly at the construction industry, not at the consumer or retrofitment markets although Laing says it is exploring the possibility of offering lower-cost versions for fitting in existing houses.
Prices quoted for various configurations range from £1,000 to about £4,000, and Laing puts the price of the Richmond prototype at a substantial £7,000. However, such figures are considered quite affordable in the context of a new house that might cost well over £250,000.
HDA says it has already attracted “enormous interest” from the house building market. Meanwhile, it is targeting its free-standing cabinets and access systems more towards end users.
The company is not manufacturing the boxes itself. The built-in temperature-controlled range is being produced by Airseal, a major manufacturer of industrial refrigeration units. For free-standing cabinets, the company has formed a relationship with another newcomer to the field, Deleport
