Whether business or private - more and more parcels are being sent. To keep pace, Hermes has opened a new logistics centre in Greven and is already planning another distribution centre for next year.

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The parcel market is a booming business. The courier, express and parcel industry transported around 3.52 billion consignments in Germany in 2018. This corresponds to an increase of 4.9 percent and is a new record. On average, twelve million parcels were delivered per day. The industry’s total turnover rose to 20.4 billion euros, 5.2 percent more than in the previous year.

The trend will continue. For 2019, the Bundesverband Paket und Expresslogistik (BIEK - German Parcel and Express Logistics Association) is expecting an increase in shipments of up to 4.5 percent. The service providers must adapt to this and adapt their logistics. Hermes is doing this continuously at the moment. A new distribution centre was opened in Greven in October. In 2020, another company is to commence operations near Bremen. Together, the two centres can process more than 150,000 consignments a day.

New Hermes centre already designed to double

The new distribution centre in Greven at Münster/Osnabrück Airport comprises a logistics area of around 9,000 square metres. 42 million euros were invested here. More than 140 employees can handle over 100,000 consignments daily. Hermes expects further growth. The conveyor technology is designed in such a way that the capacity of the system can be doubled to up to 200,000 consignments per day as part of an expansion. Olaf Schabirosky, CEO of Hermes Germany: “With the new distribution centre, we are offering our business clients and private customers in western Germany even faster handling and thus shorter delivery times. Thanks to the state-of-the-art conveyor technology used at the site, we are ideally positioned to handle the continuously increasing volumes of consignments. With the new logistics centre, we are creating additional capacities in our nationwide network, particularly in view of the approaching Christmas business.”

Three new distribution centres this year

The Greven distribution centre is already the third to be opened by Hermes this year. There are others in Hamburg and Leipzig. Another logistics centre is currently under construction. In Weyhe near Bremen, a new high-performance depot is due to be launched in October 2020. Hermes is investing a two-digit million sum to process more than 50,000 consignments a day. This centre is also designed for further increases in consignments. More than 100 employees will take care of smooth operations at the new location. “The new building in Weyhe is of enormous strategic importance for us,” explains Christian Helbig, Head of Real Estate & Facility Management at Hermes Germany. “The new distribution centre will enable us to supply the city of Bremen and the surrounding area even faster and more efficiently. In addition, our sustainable building concept and the planned charging infrastructure for our e-transporter fleet make the location very future-oriented”.

In addition to Hermes, other parcel service providers are also planning additional charges

Just how much pressure the parcel industry is under is shown by research by the news magazine Spiegel on the Christmas business. According to this, many parcel services demand surcharges from online merchants and other business customers in this particularly intensive delivery period. DPD wants to charge an average of 75 cents more per parcel. A company spokesman explained this with the higher number of parcels, which would make delivery considerably more expensive. According to this media report, UPS wants to demand more, especially for particularly large or heavy parcels. Hermes also wants to levy so-called peak surcharges. The company announced this to Wirtschaftswoche. These charges will also apply to returns. Hermes will negotiate the amount of the surcharges with its business customers individually. Dealers who deliver their goods by mail are thus faced with a difficult decision, especially in the high-turnover Christmas business. Do they pass on the additional fees to their customers and thus make their products more expensive? Or do they bear the costs themselves and thus reduce their margins?

 

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Link: The service provider Hermes is investing around 300 million euros in its nationwide logistics network.

Image: Hermes

//KH