Royal Mail will soon begin piloting a new Sunday parcel delivery service for major retailers across the UK.
Numerous retail brands have already signed up, with Royal Mail said to be in talks to roll out the service to other retailers soon.
The delivery firm has seen ‘unprecedented’ parcel volumes over the last year, thanks to the online shopping boom. With some 496 million parcels been processed and delivered in the third quarter ending 27 December 2020.
Given that many consumers have now come to expect Sunday deliveries as standard, Royal Mail has been potentially missing out to rivals like DPD and Hermes. The move to a seven day service will, says the company, help it meet growing customer demand for more ‘convenient and frequent’ parcel deliveries.
While the construction of Royal Mail’s second, and largest, parcel hub, which is underway at Daventry, in the Midlands, will also help manage increased parcel volumes. Once complete, the new hub will have the capacity to process over one million parcels per day.
Nick Landon, chief commercial officer at Royal Mail, said: “The UK already trusts us to deliver their purchases six days a week both quickly and conveniently. Now for the first time our posties will be doing the same thing seven days a week.
“The last year has reset so many customer expectations and the desire for even more convenient and even more frequent parcel deliveries has certainly been one of them.
“We always listen to our customers, both senders and recipients, and the ask here was clear: we love what you do Monday to Saturday, so please do the same on a Sunday. So that’s what we’re doing, as quickly as possible so we can offer it to more and more customers across the course of this year. It’s another really exciting change delivered by our trusted people and network.”
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