Spring UK prepares for peak volumes and Brexit
PostNL’s Spring UK subsidiary is ready to confront the expected double challenge of the pre-Christmas peak and Brexit after seeing revenues generated by e-commerce shipments soar by two-thirds so far this year.
Craig Lee, the company’s Head of Sales, Marketing and Channel, commented: “Shipments to new and emerging markets as well as more established destinations have increased substantially over the course of the last 12 months.”
He claimed that further considerable investment in services and support during the last year had left Spring UK “extremely well-placed” to help clients cope with the busiest period of the year and Britain's breaking ties with the European Union on 31 December.
Lee explained: “It's clear that all the hard work that we have put into developing our services and cross-border delivery infrastructure is indeed paying off. The volume of parcels which we are handling has risen significantly once again and we are helping retailers engage with customers in new territories overseas.
“We are also heading into what is traditionally the busiest period of the year, yet this is likely to be the most challenging peak season that any of us have ever faced. Neither retailers nor carriers can ignore the fact that a whole new set of arrangements will come into force on the first of January due to the transition period following Brexit coming to a close.”
His comments come only weeks after the latest set of figures published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show the effects that consumers’ increasing willingness to buy online combined with lockdown have had on e-commerce sales. Average weekly online sales in Britain in August stood at £2.24 billion, up 91% on the same month in 2017.
According to Lee, a contribution to the large increase in revenues was also made by Spring’s capability to provide expertise to UK retail clients looking to expand their customer base in the Benelux countries.
However, he also highlighted how income from cross-border consignments to many destinations, including Australia, Japan, Canada, Turkey and the Iberian peninsula, had more than doubled in the last 12 months alone.
