Consumer parcels specialist Hermes is predicting record volumes in Germany and the UK during this year’s peak season and is preparing with additional capacity, more workers and a peak surcharge in its home market.
In Germany, the Hamburg-based company, which is owned by retail giant Otto Group, expects to handle more than 85 million parcels in total during the 2019 holiday season, which would be about 6% more than last year. It could see up to 2.3 million parcels on peak days.
After investing in several new locations over the last few months as part of its ongoing €300 million capacity expansion programme, Hermes Germany will take on about 6,500 temporary workers and use about 3,900 additional delivery vehicles to handle this year’s record volumes. Overall, about 15,000 permanent and temporary workers will be delivering Hermes parcels during this peak season.
"Given the continued growth in parcel volumes combined with rising staffing requirements in a virtually empty labour market, the Christmas season is a challenge for the entire logistics industry each year. In Germany alone, we will deliver about 2.3 million shipments on peak days in 2019," said Marco Schlüter, Chief Operations Officer of Hermes Germany.
"Continuing investments in digitisation, the last mile, new locations and technology are therefore essential,” he stressed. “For example, with our new logistics centres in Hamburg, Leipzig and at Münster / Osnabrück Airport, we have once again massively increased our sorting capacities this year. This will pay off during the Christmas season, in particular.”
Schlüter underlined that Hermes is working “hand in hand” with retail customers to forecast peak volumes precisely and plan capacity in good time for this year’s peak volumes.
Notably, the company will once again implement an individually negotiated peak season surcharge with business customers in November and December to compensate for the additional operational costs. The surcharge will cover all retailer shipments, including returns, but not private parcels sent by consumers.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Hermes expects a very strong 14% rise in peak season volumes, although it did not disclose the likely total number of parcels. Deliveries will be made seven days a week from the beginning of December up to and including Christmas Eve.
In preparation, the company has invested heavily in additional capacity to enable its network to process up to 2.5 million parcels a day. An additional 1,000 trailers and 3,200 scanning devices have been acquired and 560 drivers, 7,000 couriers and 32 peak managers will join existing teams to provide seasonal support.
Over the last year, Hermes UK has invested about £21.5 million investment to boost operational capacity, including the opening of a third sortation tier at its Rugby hub.
Martijn de Lange, CEO at Hermes UK, said: “We started planning for the peak period at the start of the year, working with our longstanding and committed retail clients. This ensures we have the required additional capacity to deliver increased parcel volumes at this crucial time of the year, in turn allowing us to deliver a premium service for our customers and clients.
“As a growing business which has made significant investment in the past 12 months, we are confident this peak will once again be a resounding success.”
