Royal Mail to trial Sunday parcel delivery in London area
Royal Mail is planning to trial seven-day-a-week delivery for parcels this summer, as it looks to claw back a bigger slice of e-commerce growth in the UK. The universal postal service provider is expected to reveal fairly flat growth levels in its parcel business when it releases its first annual results as a privatised company tomorrow.
Despite healthy growth figures for the UK parcel industry as a whole, with e-commerce booming, growth in Royal Mail’s parcel business has been dampened by strong competition and the impact of price increases.
The company, which did offer seven-day-a-week parcel delivery during the festive season last year, will trial Sunday delivery service later this summer within the Greater London area, for participating retailers.
It also plans to open about 100 delivery offices on Sunday afternoons to improve access for customers picking up parcels.
Royal Mail’s express parcels unit, Parcelforce Worldwide, will be offering a Sunday service from June.
Chief executive Moya Greene said the new expanded service was being backed by the Communication Workers Union under this year’s new collective bargaining agreement.
“Through these new Sunday services we are exploring ways to improve our flexibility and provide more options for people to receive items they have ordered online,” she said.
“The support of the Communication Workers Union has enabled us to respond quickly to a changing market, underlining the importance of the ground-breaking Agenda for Growth agreement.”
“Exciting innovation”
The Communication Workers Union, which represents more than 115,000 postal workers at Royal Mail, described the Sunday service expansion as “an exciting innovation” today.
Dave Ward, the CWU deputy general secretary, said Royal Mail had to expand its services to customers to stay competitive within a “broadly unregulated sector”.
“Offering Sunday delivery and collection services is the right response from the company,” he said.
“With ever-increasing numbers of people opting to shop online, Sunday services are necessary to deal with the growing demand in parcel delivery.”
Ward added that his union was in talks with Royal Mail to ensure postal workers affected by the service changes receive good terms and conditions, and are not forced to take Sunday shifts.
UK e-commerce trade association IMRG said last month that parcel order volumes were up 19.2% year-on-year in March 2014, with Internet retailers based in the UK expected to generate 920m parcels this year on current trends, excluding in-store “Click and Collect” collections.
Royal Mail’s rivals DPD UK and Hermes announced plans earlier this year to launch Sunday parcel delivery services. DPD UK will be launching its Sunday service from 20 July 2014.
