E-tail fulfilment boom beckons for Post Office

The Post Office is considering offering an e-fulfilment service through its branch network, enabling consumers to collect online purchases from their local post office.
A test scheme involving an undisclosed number of the 18,500 UK post offices will be run in selected regions in the autumn. E-tailers Amazon, Blackstar and Zoom are among those in discussions
with the Post Office at the moment.
The Post Office’s head of home shopping, Nigel Moore, said he believes the organisa-tion will play a key role in the development of e-commerce. He said: “There is a big infra-structure at the Post Office, a tried and tested operation, which can benefit e-com-merce.”
Moore said that the initiative could result in changes to Post
Office opening times so that online shoppers are able to pick up products at conve-nient times.
He said: “We are looking to utilise post offices as e-fulfil-ment collection points, but have to look at all the specifi-cations. That is why we will do a trial first.”
The Post Office is also spending £12 million on a warehouse and pick-and-pack system to offer an outsourcing
option to e-tailers.
“A lot of e-tailers have excel-lent merchandise and Web-site design, but they struggle with the distribution and the fulfilment side. We are looking to provide a complete distrib-ution service,” said Moore.
Last month, the Post Office launched an evening delivery service to allow Internet shop-pers to have goods delivered to their homes at a specified time.