Record Black Friday Weekend for Hermes
Hermes has reported that it notched up a record Black Friday Weekend in the UK. Over the weekend in total, Hermes processed 4.8m items, which was more than a third (34%) up on the 3.6m in 2014.
Carole Woodhead, CEO at Hermes, said: “Despite the massive increase in volumes this year we coped well as a result of our investment and our intensive planning programme with our retail customers.
“Despite some challenges around bad weather in the North of the country we were able to deliver on time. We are fully prepared for the peak period which we expect to continue from now until Christmas Eve.”
The investment highlighted by Woodhead included the completion of a secondary sortation tier at Hermes’ automated distribution hub in Warrington, providing the capability to process up to one million parcels a day at that site.
In addition, Hermes has opened another 125 sub depots, as well as increasing the number of scanners and handheld terminals across the business and adding 3,000 couriers to its network.
The company has also been working closely with its retail customers, analysing forecasted volumes and confirming collection schedules. Representatives from Hermes’ customer service team are also stationed at clients’ contact centres to deal with any enquiries and help on-site teams.
