Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the Retail sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
Parcel delivery groups are opening record numbers of mail lockers as they race to meet growing demand for cheaper and more convenient online shopping deliveries.
Some of the biggest delivery businesses said competition to secure prime locations for the lockers — which allow recipients to collect purchases when it suits them rather than wait for deliveries at home — was intensifying after they rushed to install more lockers in 2024 than in any previous year.
“It’s a race,” said Yves Delmas, chief executive of French group Geopost, owner of DPD.
Consumers “choose the lockers [that are] around the corner, close to their home or their work, to the school of their kids”, he added. “So if you’re not there you just lose attractiveness and therefore you lose market share.”
Geopost will report in its annual results on Tuesday that the number of locker locations it offered across Europe rose 63 per cent to 31,000 during 2024, its biggest annual increase ever.
German group DHL also said that its locker network grew by a record amount in 2024, rising almost 50 per cent to 36,000 locations globally.
The race to install lockers has highlighted the growing demand for 24/7 online shopping deliveries as consumers also looked to cut down on costs during an extended period of high inflation. Lockers, often installed on high streets and outside supermarkets, are typically available for collections throughout the day and are generally cheaper than home deliveries.
Big delivery groups, which rely on thousands of drivers, are also hoping lockers will help them cut costs as they struggle with wage inflation in the battle for greater shares of the ecommerce market.
Delmas said providing locker collections was “less labour-intensive” for Geopost, whose profits have come “under high pressure” as salaries rose faster than inflation.
But Pablo Ciano, chief executive of DHL’s ecommerce business, said the cost of prime locker locations was also rising slightly as competition increased.
“It is very competitive and real estate and locations are becoming a challenge,” he added. But “consumers want to just go and pick up their parcel without having to be at home. [It’s] more convenient and it’s cheaper”.
As the availability of new locations dwindled, Ciano said that he was also expecting more shopping to delivered to alternative collection points such as corner shops. DHL’s use of all out-of-home locations, which currently represents about a tenth of its shipments, was doubling every year in most European markets, he added.
Locker collections are already the preferred option in some Baltic and central European countries, where Polish parcel locker specialist InPost has helped drive adoption.
InPost said it had also had a record year in terms of parcel volumes and new lockers in 2024, with the group’s number of locker banks rising 33 per cent to 46,977 locations across Europe.
This month it also announced a new UK service allowing people to post parcels to each other via lockers at a minimum cost of £1.99, undercutting Royal Mail’s prices of at least £3.25 per parcel.
But Royal Mail is also expanding beyond home deliveries as it prepares for a fresh injection of capital following a planned takeover by Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský, with the UK postal provider announcing its “fastest year for our rollout of out-of-home locations ever”.
The group plans to increase its number of collection points by almost 50 per cent to roughly 21,000 during the year to March, including 1,500 locker banks.
But Royal Mail, which unlike other mail groups relies on permanently employed postal workers, could face greater resistance. The head of the postal workers union recently told the Financial Times that he was “going to have concerns about the extent” of investment in lockers by Křetínský.
