Interview – Evri reports on double-digit growth and outlines international growth strategy

UK parcel delivery firm Evri has big plans to become an international e-commerce enabler targeting fast-growing cross border lanes across the world through strategic partnerships and driving domestic growth through industry-leading contracts, with the firm set to build on its successful 2023, which saw double-digit growth in parcel volumes.

Evri’s growth in 2023 and its 2024 plans were outlined by Ryan Norris, Director of Sales at the B2C carrieri, who spoke exclusively to CEP-Research at The Delivery Conference last week.

Norris was unable to comment on recent news that Evri’s majority shareholder, Advent International, may be considering selling its 75% stake in the carrier. But he did confirm that the firm’s growth is expected to continue in 2024 thanks to a strategic plan which will see the carrier transition from a parcel delivery business to an “anywhere to anywhere” international fulfilment and delivery e-commerce enabler.

CEP-Research: How did Evri perform in 2023?

Norris: It was another year of double-digit growth for Evri. For the first half of the year volumes were up about 18% year-on-year. Peak, meanwhile, was equally as busy as last year. Overall, volumes should be up about 10-12% during the 2023 financial year, which runs until the end of February.

Our growth is coming from a few mega trends, such as the inbound Chinese market, particularly from new entrants like Temu and Shein. The Temu marketplace wasn’t even present in the UK 12-18 months ago, but it is now one of our biggest customers. Shein is also huge and growing. Luckily for us, we managed to capture volumes from these marketplaces early on and they are now building capacity through us.

We are also finding that the whole pre-loved sector is exploding right now. So, the C2C channel is growing massively. We also had a lot of volume growth with small businesses.

What big investments have you made over the past year?

We have invested around £40 million to modernise and increase capacity in some depots and delivery units as part of our ongoing investment plan. We have also invested heavily in customer experience (CX) throughout the year, which was an area that was overdue investment. We relaunched a much more intuitive chatbot, for example, with a cleaner front end for the consumers and invested more in our customer service contact centres. Over the past year, we have become more available to the end consumers.

Were the CX investments made following the results of the Ofcom and Citizens Advice customer satisfaction reports, which both placed Evri at the bottom?

Those reports were a little disappointing, particularly given that we believe we deliver a good quality of service. We are always trying to improve, however. I wouldn’t say the investments were a reaction to these reports, they were more just part of our continual improvement plan. We did have to own end consumer queries more, so we have faced that and fixed that.

We measure customer satisfaction by talking to our end consumers, which we believe is a more reliable metric. Our Trustpilot score is 4.3 and our CSAT and NPS scores trend favourably against every industry leading competitor that we face. Another important thing to consider if the voice of the retailer – double-digit growth doesn’t happen because we have a poor service.

How did Evri perform during Peak 2023?

We delivered more than 150 million parcels during peak, which was a record for us. Our busiest day was around 3.4 million parcels. It didn’t feel like a peak, however, because this year we planned for it better and a lot earlier. We started our courier recruitment much earlier this year, for example, so by the time parcels started peaking, the couriers were in and fully trained.

Service wise, I believe peak was a big success. We didn’t notice any service degradation at all, and I think this was testament to the fact that our hubs, depots, and courier capacity was in situ well before peak. [Service levels were consistently at or above 99% for standard deliveries according to a recent Evri report].

What new contracts and partnerships did you secure in 2023?

We became an accredited Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime carrier in 2023, which means we can deliver parcels on behalf of all merchants on the e-commerce giant’s website. This opened a huge new market of opportunity for Evri and we are very proud of this achievement, which we believe we secured because of our consistently high service quality. We now have access to a pretty sizeable market.

We also announced the new Post Office collaboration, which enables consumers to buy Evri services in Post Office branches. This was another huge milestone for us, as previously the Post Office had a nearly 400-year relationship with Royal Mail. To be available in national institutions such as the Post Office was great.

We have also made further investments in things like international fulfilment, because all our retail partners are now looking to scale and globalise, and we want to help them with that.

Tell us more about your international strategy.

We are trying to create a concept where we offer our customers delivery anywhere to anywhere. We are no longer a domestic parcel carrier with a few international lanes. Now we are an e-commerce enabler which ships to and from 220 countries and territories.

As part of our international strategy, we have recently signed partnerships with JD.com, which is aimed at encouraging the growth of British and European retailers in the Chinese market, and with Oman’s Asyad Express to develop a fulfilment hub in the Middle East.

We also have a fulfilment site in Basildon in the UK, which an important export gateway, and a fulfilment facility in the Netherlands. This helps UK retailers ship cross border into Europe. We also have two partner sites in the US.

What regions are you targeting for further international growth?

We are targeting the bigger lanes, such as Europe and the US. We are also finding emerging growth markets in places like the Middle East. Our strategic plans for international growth are also aligned with a lot of our retailers’ global growth plans. We like to think that gone are the days where domestic partnerships are the only help that we can give to our retailers. We want to help them globalise as well, and build their volumes internationally, which in turn builds our volumes.  

What strategic plans do you have for 2024?

In 2024 we hope to win more Amazon Prime share and more outbound and C2C volumes, returns, fulfilment and SME customers. Within all these areas we need to better utilise the network that we have built. With regards to the C2C and preloved sector, this is an interesting one as in some cases carriers move the same parcel three or four times – this drives volumes.

Overall, we believe 2024 will be another year with double-digital growth, with increased volumes mainly coming through our existing partnerships.

We also have plans to scale up our sustainability plans to help us meet our 2035 net zero goal. E-cargo bikes will deliver 500,000 parcels this year. We would like to double or treble this figure next year, so there will definitely be more investment in this area. We will also continue to test our new electric HGV - if successful, this could become a big part of our electric fleet journey.