DHL, FedEx testing out drones in rural areas to deliver packages quickly Rise of drones, bikes in delivery firms

■

Madrid, Nov. 22: Whether bikes or drones, delivery firms are looking for ways to get packages to customers quicker as electronic commerce is revolutionising the retail market.

Geopost, the parcel delivery unit of France’s La Poste, is testing out drones and experimenting with neighbourhood minidepots and bicycle delivery to help beat urban traffic gridlock.

Its subsidiary SEUR in Madrid is developing mini- facilities where packages are brought before being distributed to customers nearby — an alternative to the current system where delivery vans are loaded at bigger centres, often located outside the city.

Parcel delivery was the first to be liberalised in Europe, but it is the former monopoly postal services of France and Germany that have come out on top.

Geopost is second to leader Deutsche Post’s DHL, which is also testing drones in rural areas.

US giant FedEx, trying out robots as well as drones, has bought TNT from the Dutch postal service.

While email has eroded the volume of letters, ecommerce has led to a boom in parcel delivery.

“The market remains marked primarily by the growth of business to consumer, which accounts for 95 per cent of the increase,” said Geopost’s director Paul- Marie Chavanne

Geopost saw its sales rise 8.6 per cent last year to 6.2 billion euros ($ 7.3 billion), with more than threequarters coming from outside France.

It now accounts for more than a quarter of the La Poste’s total revenue.

The challenges delivery firms face vary by the area, urban or rural, as do the solutions they are looking at.

“The trend, in all European countries, is to deploy these mini- depots to adapt to the constraints posed by the greater traffic” in cities, said Yves Delmas, the deputy CEO of Geopost for Europe.

In Paris, the company sees the need for around 80 mini- depots, which in some cases could be installed in parking garages or even in post offices.

A small client service area abuts the storage room lined with shelves and a small loading area used by deliverers, in particular cyclists from Stuart, a start- up delivery service for retailers that La Poste recently bought.

New ventures like Stuart are trying to offer bricksandmortar shops a service similar to what firms like Deliveroo do for restaurants in France.