Evri delivered ‘record parcel volumes’ over the festive peak

Evri delivered 24.7 million parcels in the week to December 7, making this the biggest week in its 50-year history. This was up 20.8% on the same post-Black Friday period in 2023.

Following this, Evri said it experienced several weeks of high demand as consumers rushed to grab deals from online retailers with shoppers “putting their trust in last-minute deliveries”.

Total parcel volumes grew 12% to reach 173 million in the nine weeks to December 28. On average, Evri delivered 2.7 million parcels a day over this festive period as 4,000 parcels reached UK households every minute.

The busiest day occurred on December 4, with nearly 3.8 million items delivered.

It saw strong demand from its ecommerce segment, as online marketplaces and social media shopping continued to be popular with consumers.

Evri invested around £35m during the peak period, including hiring 8,000 extra couriers, adding more delivery units, simplifying its customer service access and providing new delivery preference options.

Evri chief executive Martijn De Lange said: “We continue to see fast growth towards our five-year target to become a billion parcel a year business and the Christmas trading period was no exception with our delivery volumes demonstrating that retailers online offerings fared much better than expected. We saw record volumes of deliveries and double-digit growth as generous shoppers treated loved ones and friends.

“During a festive season that saw approximately 40 million UK adults doing most of their Christmas shopping online, the investments in our network and customer service paid off – sustaining our yearly average of more than 99% of standard parcels being delivered on time.

“We recruited an extra 9,000 people to prepare for our busiest trading period and our amazing couriers and colleagues stopped at nothing as they came together to deliver for our retail clients and shoppers.”