Royal Mail has nearly trebled its fleet of electric vans as it looks to reduce emissions. The postal provider has added 190 electric vans to its current 100, with the new additions serving London and the South-East. Comprised of Mercedes-Benz eVito and Peugeot Partner vehicles, the new fleet can be (more…)
Italy’s largest postal distribution network Poste Italiane has built a new hub that can use automation to sort 250,000 packages per day. The hub at transport exchange Interporto Bologna, built with an investment of €50 million, has a total surface area of 75000 square metres. Relying extensively on what Poste (more…)
Hermes will increase the number of vehicles delivering larger items in response to demand from retailers. The company plans to up volumes of items weighing more than 18kg by more than 20% per year going forward. While Hermes delivers 1 million smaller items per day, an unspecified number of larger (more…)
Waitrose is more than doubling the coverage of its in-home delivery service trial as it looks to gather more data. The ‘While You’re Away’ service will expand from 300 postcodes to 818 following positive feedback. This will increase the number of customers involved from 50 to 150. The trial allows (more…)
Amazon’s UK employees have launched protests to coincide with Prime Day 2019 over alleged poor work conditions at its fulfilment centres. Union GMB has organised protests at centres including Rugeley, Swansea, Peterborough, Warrington, Coventry, Doncaster and Milton Keynes. The protests started today (15 July) and will continue throughout the week, (more…)
Carrefour is selling its stake in the business which owns several of its logistics centres. The company has agreed to sell its 32% stake in Cargo Property Assets to logistics real estate specialist Argan. Cargo owns around a third of Carrefour’s distribution centres. The supermarket giant will net €290 million (more…)
Ocado’s US client Kroger has announced the location for its second distribution centre. The US grocer announced it would invest $55 million in a new fulfilment centre located in Forest Park, Georgia. The 375,000 square foot site will allow it to deliver fresh food more quickly in the Atlanta area. (more…)
Zalando customers in Switzerland can now offer products in the morning and receive a same-day evening delivery. The service allows customers to place an order between midnight and 10.30 AM. Zalando staff will then prepare the orders at Lahr in Germany before they are transported to Switzerland and to a (more…)
Seventy-three percent of UK shoppers have abandoned carts due to inadequate shipping options, a new report has found. The BigCommerce report also found that 47% of retailers didn’t know what their cart abandonment rate was. Meanwhile, 35% had stopped shopping with an online retailer because of a bad shipping experience. (more…)
UK postal carrier Royal Mail has announced plans for a new automated warehouse in the north west of the UK. The new hub will be able to process over 600,000 parcels per day, primarily supporting next-day deliveries and larger parcels. Royal Mail said it will relocate its existing distribution centre (more…)
Amazon customers will be able to return products for free and without packaging to its US physical stores. The service allows shoppers to obtain a QR code from the Amazon Return Center and then hand packages to store staff without a box or label. Staff will then pack and ship (more…)
Online grocer and tech company Ocado is hoping to tap into London’s technology sector as it opens a new innovation centre in the city. The company is establishing a new centre in Old Street to work on its Ocado Smart Platform (OSP), its bespoke warehouse automation software which it offers (more…)
Customers will be able to collect their DHL parcels from 500 Lidl stores across Germany by the end of this year as the two companies expand their collaboration. The DHL Packstations, which are already available at 12 Lidl branches, are lockers that allow customers to send or receive parcels. Buyers (more…)
Fast fashion retailer Zalando is planning to build a new fulfilment centre in the Netherlands as it looks to support ambitious growth targets in Western Europe. Strategically located next to the A12 highway, the site at Bleiswijk near Rotterdam will serve customers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Spain and (more…)
Zalando is looking to recruit private citizens such as stay-at-home parents and the self-employed manage new click and collect service points in a three-month pilot with PostNord. The fashion giant will introduce 50 of the points in residential areas of the cities of Copenhagen and Aarhus. Customers can choose the (more…)
Decathlon is working with Belgium’s postal giant to roll out parcel collection lockers at its stores in Belgium. The sports retailer and bpost are introducing collection points at 12 stores across Belgium by the end of 2019. The first points will be at stores in Maasmechelen and Olen, with Antwerp (more…)
Hermes drivers will be able to verify deliveries using smartphones through a new barcode scanner app. The company will replace 15000 dedicated barcode scanners with smartphones running a dedicated Android app provided by computer vision company Scandit. The app will allow couriers to scan items, record electronic signatures, verify ID (more…)
Danish retailer JYSK has taken on 35000 square metres of new warehouse space in Poland. The site is located at logistics giant P3’s Piotrków Park location, with JYSK working with agency M4 Real Estate to find the site. JYSK uses the rental space for buffer storage. The new space brings (more…)
Dutch grocery giant Albert Heijn is trialling the use of food delivery robots on the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven. The Aitonomi robot will deliver goods on working days between 15 and 26 July, with customers able to place orders at the AH to go store. Albert Heijn employees load (more…)
A new method of modelling which uses IoT sensors to monitor supply chains in real time could transform logistics, according to a new report by DHL. The logistics giant predicted that the use of “digital twins”, in which a virtual representation of physical asset is created and continually updated in (more…)