On-demand Delivery Service Launched In London

The service is already running in the US and is based on the Shyp model, the company aim to “bring digital convenience to the first mile of a package’s journey”. The company said that it has raised £100,000 in early investments from angel investors, with a round of seed funding expected shortly.

The way it works is that customers take a picture of the item they would like to send using their app and press the ‘Pickup Now’ button. A Weengs Angel will then collect the item from their home or office within 15 minutes. Items are then wrapped at no extra cost at a central hub before being distributed by one of Weengs’ partner carriers, which include Royal Mail, ParcelForce, Hermes, UPS and DHL. If a customer wishes to send a parcel internationally Weengs will handle all documentation required for International Customs. Weengs charges a flat fee of £5.00 per collection plus the cost of delivery. There are three speed options for delivery: economy (default), and two express options guaranteed to arrive by the date in-app. If selected as an option, packages may also include tracking.

The service is currently available Monday to Saturday from 8:30am to 4:30pm in selected parts of East London. As the company progresses they are looking to offer the service 7 days a week with extended operating hours of 8:00am to 8:00pm. Commenting on the launch, Greg Zontanos, Co-Founder at Weengs said: “With on-demand TV, 24 hour shopping and services like Uber on the market, consumers now regularly expect instant gratification. So we built Weengs with that in mind, creating a service that made it easy to ship anything, anywhere for the best price at the tap of a button.”

AJG Parcels Deal Allows Them To Compete In The eCommerce Parcel Market

In 20 years AJG parcels have gone from delivering 20 parcels a day to 9,000. In a year this is around 3 million parcels, the company has 140 staff members and has a fleet of 100 vehicles which are all equipped with GPS. Latest available accounts show that the business made a pre-tax profit of £1.65m in the year to the end of June 2014, on turnover of £8.75m. Menzies uses his vehicles to deliver newspapers and magazines throughout the night to customers. A way in which AJG are looking to expand their company is to also start making daytime deliveries.

AJG Parcels operates from two 10,000sq ft hubs one of which is in Inverness; this one provides same-day delivery throughout the Highlands. The second 10,000 sq ft regional hub in Linwood, near Glasgow, services Argyll with daily links to its bases in Dunoon, Lochgilphead, Oban and Fort William. Overall, it has a network of 13 satellite depots providing a next-day service to consumers in many areas including the Western Isles and Orkney.

Managing director Forsyth Black said: “The purchase of AJG is an important step in our ongoing journey to build on our newspaper and magazine distribution business. It is especially significant because it allows us to participate in the fast-growing market of parcel delivery and collection. With our existing geographical reach, especially in harder to access towns, the acquisition further underlines our appeal to companies seeking cost-efficient deliveries to the North and rural West of Scotland. We believe that, by acting as a neutral consolidator in these areas, we can offer a compelling partnership proposition to the UK’s major parcel carriers.”

Will an on-board off-peak parcel service increase the revenue?

On the 15 June at a Rail Engineers seminar the Minister said that UK had seen a “remarkable rise” in rail freight however also stated that the infrastructure had suffered from a lack of investment. Looking forward, the new government are determined that with new opportunities things will turn around to make the industry grow and become more profitable

Increasing the rail’s share of the Haulage market is bound to bring arguments due to the effect it will have on the environment. “The benefits from rail freight are clear, it can help reduce road congestion. It is significantly safer and less polluting than road haulage, and it is highly reliable. And thanks to work the Rail Delivery Group has undertaken, we now know the value of those benefits to the UK economy: some £1.6 billion every year. Forecast freight growth over the next five years is even greater than passenger growth in percentage terms, and the longer-term forecasts are equally strong.“

So over the next five years, the government wants to work with the rail freight industry to realise that growth. And to help remove the barriers that might inhibit it. “We have started as we mean to go on. The work that has already been done to provide gauge clearance on strategic routes, and to make room for longer freight trains, will help the industry improve its productivity and efficiency. Passenger airlines can earn extra revenue by carrying goods, so if passenger trains have off-peak services with very few passengers, why should they not make use of available space to offer a parcel service?”

The idea of launching a parcel service for passenger trains has been explored before, but not always with enthusiasm. Post& Parcel sent a tweet about Perry’s speech this morning, it drew the response: “Lordy! Back to the days of Red Star !” (Red Star Parcels was the parcel delivery service which the former state-owned rail company British Rail set up in 1963 and sold off in the late 1990s.)

The Man On The Street May Soon Be Delivering Your Amazon Parcels

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal Amazon are developing an app that would pay participating members of the public to deliver goods. This scheme is one of many which Amazon are developing to try and cut cost in their delivery sector as it is one of the most expensive costs within their company.

Amazon is planning on calling the delivery program ‘On My Way’ internally, however before it can solidify there are many logistic problems to be worked out beforehand. The issues include theft prevention, protection against liability, and of course, cost – big delivery companies and the Post Office are much more efficient than most alternatives. Amazon are prepared to be flexible about its parcel delivery options and this particular model – where people making a journey for their own reasons will give a “lift” to a package. This delivery strategy is already being used by a number of companies, including Roadie in the US and Nimber in Scandinavia and the UK.

Amazon has sealed an exclusive deal with the post office to deliver parcels on a Sunday. Amazon is also looking into adding another customer option called ‘Bring It To Me’. This option will use the customers GPS to locate their location and will then deliver a parcel to them within 30 minutes via drones. Another way in that Amazon are tying to offset their high shipping costs is to start advertising on the outside of their parcels.

Royal Mail Issues Cautious Outlook

Royal Mail results show they achieved growth of 1% revenue with their domestic parcels; the growth was helped mainly by its European parcel business GLS. This counteracted the decrease in letters that are being sent which had a 1% decrease in revenue. European parcels business GLS saw its revenue rise 7% year-on-year, ahead of expectations to £1.65bn, while operating profit rose 6.4% to £115m. Volumes were up 8% year-on-year at GLS. Results from the past 12 months showed underlying revenue up 1% to £9.42bn, but pre-taxed profits were down by 35% to £421m compared to the same period last year. Nevertheless earnings per share were up 39% to 42.8p.

The company is now trying to expand their growth further by improving their efficiency. Moya Greene, the Royal Mail chief executive, said: “We have delivered operating profits in line with our expectations. Our continued focus on efficiency resulted in a better than expected UK cost performance, offsetting lower than anticipated UK parcel revenue. At the same time we have delivered a large number of innovations at pace as we transform our business.”Our trading environment remains challenging, but we are now poised to step up the pace of change to drive efficiency, growth and innovation, while maintaining a tight focus on costs.”

In the past year Royal Mail have lost some of its significant rivals including parcel carrier city link and the end-to-end delivery business however Royal Mail have stated that the parcel and letter market in the UK is still very competitive. Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargreaves Lansdown said: “Royal Mail has posted numbers which indicate measured progress in a treacherous environment.

“Whilst the exit of both City Link and Whistl may have removed some of the competition, it also serves to underline how tough this sector can be. Meanwhile, the competitive threat of Amazon looms large, with Royal Mail recognising that there will be an impact to its business and, even ahead of this, there was a slight decline in revenues.”

Polish Post granting access to its delivery network to rivals InPost

The law in Poland and other European states is such that the designated postal service must allow other postal providers access to certain parts of its delivery network. This was made a requirement, as in an industry that was dominated by the state owned services, it was important to allow other providers in to spur on competition.

The Polish Post has agreed to allow InPost access to thousands of roadside mailboxes these are normally in more rural areas.

InPost, is one of the largest private postal service providers in Poland. InPost have said that their new agreement is a “milestone” in their partnerships with Poland’s Postal service. They will grow further with their new agreement allowing them to deliver items to more than 500,000 people, and to more than 115,000 mailboxes that before would only accept deliveries from the Polish Post.

Polish Post have also signed other deals with seven other postal operators allowing them access to other parts of its delivery infrastructure. Sebastian Anioł, the president of InPost, said “The biggest beneficiaries of the agreement will be all Poles who each day receive shipments in roadside mail boxes. We are ready to help Polish Post in all those areas where the state-owned operator generates a loss, because we want to reduce the Polish Post deficit, which must be borne by the Treasury and private operators.”

The difficulty for Polish Post now is that its rivals InPost are in the possible position of gaining the nation’s contract to run the universal postal service. The contract is being renewed in 2016 and even though Postal Post are still seen as the favorites InPost have been working hard in building up there presence within Poland and making sure their service is credible making them real competitors for the new contract.

The company says it now has a network of more than 8,300 customer service points across the country, InPost network includes branches, partner-run facilities and self-service parcel locker terminals. By comparison, Polish Post states that it has a network of more than 7,500 post office, branches and partner-run counters.

Doddle’s New App For Andriod

Doddle, which is the purple network of parcel stores run by National Railtargeting commuters have released the Android version of its free app. There is already an iOS version for the app which was launched in November 2014 and has been downloaded by 15% of its membership base and is used more than 1,000 times a week. The App also includes touch ID security for a quicker and safer login. This service is another step closer to eliminating “while you where out cards.”

Doddle is the only service that will receive deliveries on the shopper’s behalf from any retailer or carrier. To make customers aware when their parcel has been delivered to their preferred Doddle store they will be sent a notification telling them that it is ready for collection.

The App allows users to sign up and create Doddle accounts quickly, track the parcel that has been sent through Doddle. This service will allow customers who send parcels through Doodle complete reassurance throughout the whole delivery process.

Paddy Earnshaw, Chief Marketing Officer at Doddle said: “Online shopping should be easy and enjoyable but problems with delivery have taken some of the joy away. The release of our Android app marks an important milestone in helping to eliminate failed deliveries and we will continue to innovate in this area to make customers’ lives even easier.”

GeoPost Launches New Brand Identity

DPD and Interlink Express brand owner GeoPost, not only released impressive 2014 results today but it has also showcased the new branding for the “DPDgroup” in an effort to push global expansion.

Impressive Results

President of GeoPost, announced that 2014 saw the company grow its volumes by 10.7% and increase turnover by 13.3% to 4.9 billion euros, cementing its Number 2 position in the European Courier Express and Parcels (CEP) market. GeoPost is now the Number 1 operator in France, Spain, Ireland, Lithuania, No. 2 in Germany and Portugal and posted the fastest growth in the UK market with revenue growth of 20% in 2014.

The New Brand

With such a strong brand as DPD it is clear that GeoPost see’s DPDgroup as its flagship brand for international parcel delivery and the B2C market.

GeoPost UK CEO Dwain McDonald said: “Our new shared visual identity sends a clear message to the market that we are one seamless group across Europe, with a drive to give customers the most convenient, simple and flexible parcel delivery service.”

“Predict was developed in the UK and has been a game-changer here, so I’m delighted to see it rolled out across Europe. Likewise, the parcel shop concept is something the group has traditionally led with in Europe, but complements our UK proposition perfectly when integrated with Predict and our in-flight delivery options”

With this brand being rolled out in 22 countries, GeoPost can expect to see some growth in brand loyalty from customers who purchase from multiple countries, especially where they get a choice of carrier at checkout.

With 77% of GeoPost’s growth occurring outside France, it clearly forms a key part of its owner’s, La Poste Group, strategy to halt decline in profits at the French mail & parcel business.

Germany’s E-commerce Growth Increases

Bundesverband E-commerce und Versandhandel Deutschland latest study shows that the German population spent 49 billion euros via distance selling last year, this was mainly from internet e-commerce. Online shopping grew by 7 percent, which was well above the rest of the growth in the retail sector.

When BEVH looked at the online and traditional mail order sales from last year they found that 41.9 billion was made in online commerce sales where the overall market was worth a total of 49.1 billion euros. Germany has grown by 7 percent in the last year as its overall turnover in 2014 was 85.3% compared to last years turnover of 81%.President of the BEVH Gero Furcheim said “The development of last year shows us two things: the online and mail order commerce has established itself as an integral part of the retail sector and is thus also vulnerable to economic fluctuations. The fact that despite the difficult environment last year has led to the online trade continuing to grow is at the same time a clear indication of the industry’s potential.”

Clothing sales was worth 11.9 billion euros making it the most popular product category. In second and third place came electronics at 5 billion euros and books at 4.1 billion euros. Categories such as furniture and decorative items accounted for 2.5 billion euros that is a significant increase from last year.

With online e-commerce increasing the study shows that tablet and mobile commerce is on the rise. The association believes that multi channel merchants are the clear winners as they respond and reach customers through multiple channel. BEVH predicts a 5% rise to 51.6 billion euros for the total online and mail order industry, while commerce alone will probably increase by 12% to 46.9 billion euros.

InPost Expands Its Network of Parcel Lockers

InPost are expanding its network of parcel locker terminals in the Ukraine.

By the end of the month InPost will have installed new automated parcel collection and drop off points in over 16 locations in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Kiev will now hold a total of 40 machines due to this expansion.
The “easyPack” machines, will allow customers to have more flexibility when shopping online as it will allow them to collect their parcels from the lockers out of working hours. Easy Pack machines are being deployed at various supermarket outlets. To improve e-commerce convenience further InPost said it would be working with cosmetic retailers Avon and Oriflame among others.

The country has a population of about 45m. The Polish company said it believed the e-commerce market in Ukraine was predicted to grow as much as $1bn, this would provide good opportunity for the lockers. In 2014 the volume in their exciting lockers in Kiev grew by 1400%.

Waldemar Brzoska, the chief executive of Integer and InPost in Ukraine, said that despite the difficult political situation in the country, the e-commerce market was still growing rapidly. “We’re extremely pleased at the initial volume growth being supported by our terminals,” he said. “We’re seeing the growing potential of e-stores here, and the recognition of the need for alternative delivery services to the traditional postal and courier services. “That is why InPost easyPack machines are enjoying increasing popularity, and we expect that with the expansion of our network in this country, they will increase their market share in the e-commerce logistics sector.”

InPost UK provide solutions for ecommerce, p2p, returns solutions and provide an injection solution for the likes of ParcelWorks, an UK international carrier network. InPost currently claim to have 4,000 parcel lockers worldwide with plans to deploy a further 6,000.