Australia Post has repurposed and opened 15 new processing facilities and commenced recruitment for 600 casuals into the network and call centre to assist in managing the continued parcel delivery demand in the country.
Parcel deliveries around the country have continued to average almost 2m parcels per day since just before Easter. These volumes have almost doubled in the last four weeks, up by 90% compared to last year, as more householders shop online as they self-isolate during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, demand for other core products, including letters, have been volatile and many have halved.
“We have chartered an additional eight freighter flights, increasing this to 17 dedicated air freighter flights per day. These flights provide some relief and have improved our Express Post priority service deliveries across major capital cities by the next business day. 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,” said Australia Post Acting Group Chief Operating Officer, Rod Barnes.
Underlining its commitment to processing parcel volumes, Australia Post received regulatory relief from the Federal Government last week. As letter volumes continue to fall, it announced a change in the frequency of metropolitan letter deliveries to every second day – which will free up posties to be retrained and redeployed into delivery vans to help process parcels.
Source: Australia Post
