DPD now offering Saturday deliveries as a standard service across Germany

DPD has announced that it is now offering Saturday deliveries as a standard service for all private consignees across Germany. In a statement published yesterday (19 August), DPD said: “Last Saturday the company’s West Pomeranian parcel distribution centre in Altentreptow became the final DPD location to introduce a Saturday shift.”

“With the comprehensive launch of Saturday deliveries as a standard service for all households in Germany DPD has finally established itself as a major force on the growing market for B2C parcels”, commented DPD CEO Boris Winkelmann.

“For many shippers and consignees delivery on Saturday is a basic requirement, and this is enhanced by our innovative, digital service options. As a result, for DPD this opens up further potential growth areas for which we are ideally prepared in operational terms.”

DPD said that it has been introducing Saturday deliveries in Germany on a “step-by-step” basis since May last year. By September, added DPD, “Saturdays had become a normal delivery day for 30% of the country’s population, a figure which rose to 80% by May 2015”.

DPD said that its experience so far has indicated that the Saturday service will be a success as “private consignees” can be located at home much more easily on Saturdays than is the case during the week.

The company statement added: “Before the introduction of Saturday as a regular delivery day DPD as a rule only made deliveries from Mondays to Fridays, with Saturday delivery available on request with the company’s Express-Service. The reason for this is that DPD’s core business originally consisted of parcel shipping on behalf of business customers (B2B), and many commercial consignees are only available from Monday to Friday.”

The growth of e-commerce has, of course, played a significant role in boosting the number of parcels now being delivered to people’s homes.