Calm and steady hands to navigate through Covid-19
Parcels logistics has undergone an unmatched boom over the past weeks. ITJ correspondent Josef Müller recently spoke to Peter Umundum, the member of Austrian Post’s management board in charge of parcels and logistics activities. The interview focused on the role the post office has played in these extraordinary times.
How is Austrian Post’s logistics and CEP business faring in these times of Covid-19?
It’s a considerable challenge, of course, but thanks to the great commitment shown by all our employees we’ve been able to master the extraordinary situation. In the first few weeks of the lockdown we didn’t register much change in our parcel volumes. B2C business did rise, on account of increasing volumes of e-commerce, but in the B2B segment we actually recorded an initial decline. Many companies were closed or were only active to a very limited extent. Then the massive dispatch of parcels before Easter resulted in volumes similar to what we usually register in the pre-Christmas season. We recorded increases of 10–20%, with peak days seeing us transport between 600,000 and 700,000 parcels a day. The trend didn’t abate after Easter either.
Have e-commerce activities been fired by government reactions to the outbreak of Covid-19, and has the post office benefited?
The growing number of parcels being dispatched isn’t exclusively down to the lockdown; we’d already registered a clear upwards trend before that. That’s why we’d already started working on stepping-up our capacities and expanding our logistics networks for the long term. Increasing e-commerce activities and our partnership with the DHL Group already drove 20% growth in the parcel segment last year alone. We’re also in the thick of the e-commerce boom as the operator of our own platform, the online marketplace www.shoepping.at (sic). There’s been a massive rise in interest from online shoppers on the one hand, of course, and also from Austrian traders keen to offer their products on our platform.
Did you have to add special procedures to your logistics processes on account of Covid-19, for example for the acceptance or delivery of CEP shipments?
We introduced far-reaching measures in the company at very short notice, to protect both our employees and our customers. To this end we changed and re-jigged numerous processes. It started in our delivery hubs and logistics centres, where we introduced shifts – to ensure that less people are in contact with each other – and went through to contactless delivery. Our delivery staff call recipients by phone first and talk to the customer. The consignment is then only placed in the letterbox or deposited at the front door after that contact. It isn’t necessary for the recipient to sign for the parcel any more.
What, in the light of the current situation, is the post office’s strategy for the logistics segment for the rest of the year, and beyond that for 2021?
I believe the Austrian Post is well-positioned for next year. We’ll also improve, I believe, thanks to having learnt from our valuable experiences this year. I hope we’ll be able to be substantially more optimistic concerning our projections for 2021, however.
If we look at the logistics industry as a whole for a moment, then how would you say this Covid-19 episode has changed the sector? Will global supply chains have to be different in future?
On the one hand this crisis has clearly shown us how globally interlinked the world is today, and on the other, how quickly borders can be closed and transport connections interrupted. Globalisation will certainly remain a part of our lives, but the risks it comes with will remain more at the forefront of our awareness more now. The lesson for us global supply chain professionals is to make channels even more transparent and simultaneously place them on a more solid footing. www.post.at