Royal Mail has ‘unwrapped’ festive-branded parcel trucks for deliveries around the UK as it adds capacity to handle the seasonal end-of-year peak in volumes.
However, the British postal group, which delivered over 120 million parcels in December last year, has not released any volume forecast for this December. “We don’t publish a forecast. We will announce the December 2015 volume on 21 January 2016 in our Q3 Trading update,” a spokesman explained to CEP-Research.
For peak season operations, Royal Mail’s fleet of over 47,000 red vehicles will be supplemented by 6,800 extra vehicles. The company will also run an additional 113 flights and 20 extra rail movements through December to accommodate seasonal volumes.
Around 19,000 temporary workers have been employed and 10 parcel centres have been opened to deal with the increase in parcels at the busiest time of the year.
Sue Whalley, Chief Operating Officer, Royal Mail said: “Christmas is very important to our customers and for our business. We have been planning our festive operation since the beginning of the year. What better way to remind all our customers of the protection, reliability and high quality delivery services we provide to them no matter where they live, than by branding some of our iconic fleet to celebrate this.”
Royal Mail will be operating extended seasonal delivery and increasing customer collection services until Christmas Eve. This includes more than 400 Delivery Offices remaining open until 5 p.m. for parcel collection on Thursday December 24 2015.
Across the UK, there will be no delivery services or Customer Service Points open from Friday 25 December 2015 to Monday 28 December 2015 inclusive.
Royal Mail said it recognises that many online shoppers will order items for delivery after Christmas Day. The business has been working with a number of large customers to support them during this period. Royal Mail will continue to run its network operation throughout the holiday weekends to ensure that mail is ready for normal deliveries on Tuesday 29 December 2015 and also Monday 4 January 2016.
