Australia Post has committed to managing increasing demands for parcel deliveries by repurposing and opening 15 new processing facilities in addition to recruiting 600 casuals into its network and call centre.
According to Australia Post, parcel deliveries have continued to average at almost two million per day since just before Easter.
These volumes have almost doubled in the last four weeks, up by 90 per cent compared to last year, as more householders shop online as they self-isolate. However, Australia Post also found that demand for other core products, including letters, have been volatile and many have halved.
Australia Post acting group chief operating officer Rod Barnes said the company is working hard to manage significant delays that have been impacting the delivery of parcels.
“With our business adapting to the challenges the current pandemic presents, our normal practice of delivery has been impacted. We are experiencing significant delivery delays due to limited flights, hygiene and social distancing requirements in our network to preserve the community’s safety, and an increase in parcel volumes as more people shop online,” he said.
“For the last four weeks, we have been operating our processing and delivery services seven days a week, with our dedicated staff working on rotation over the 24-hour period, each day.
“The re-purpose and opening of 15 new facilities around the country, and the employment of more than 600 casuals, will assist in the network being able to sustain the current parcel delivery demands and reduce delays.
“In the last weekend alone this additional staffing allowed us to accept and process an unprecedented 3 million parcels into facilities from eCommerce customers.”
To assist in getting these parcels to customers, Australia Post has also refocussed 700 of its people – a mix of posties and drivers from its StarTrack business – to provide additional van deliveries across the country.
“We have chartered an additional eight freighter flights, increasing this to 17 dedicated air freighter flights per day. These flights provide some relief and has improved our Express Post priority service deliveries across major capital cities by the next business day,” Barnes added.
“Unfortunately, they do not substitute reduced access to capacity on passenger planes, and we cannot ensure the speed of deliveries at the same level as prior to the pandemic.
“We appreciate that delays can be frustrating and want to reassure that our people are working hard to get customer’s parcels to them safely and as quickly as possible.”
Underlining its commitment to processing parcel volumes, Australia Post recently received regulatory relief from the Federal Government.
As letter volumes continue to fall, it announced a change in the frequency of metropolitan letter deliveries to every second day – which it says will free up posties to be retrained and redeployed into delivery vans to help process parcels.
“This retraining of 2000 posties is all part of a broader Australia Post push to transform the business, while also managing significant disruption brought about by different lifestyles under COVID19 restrictions,” Barnes said.
“We’re progressively making these changes and continue to look at ways to optimise our delivery network to meet the current demand of parcel volumes. The majority of parcels are still arriving on time, but we ask and thank our customers for their patience, as we work as hard as we can to get parcels to you as quickly as possible.”
The Real Media Collective also recently successfully negotiated with Australia Post to provide the printing industry with postage relief during the COVID-19 pandemic period.
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