NZ Post delivering nine parcels every second in final push before Christmas
New Zealand post is delivering nine parcels a second in its final push before Christmas.
With less than a week until Christmas Day, the postal service is working around the clock to get about 2 million parcels under the tree before the big day.
NZ Post chief operating officer Brendon Main said couriers would be delivering right up until Christmas Eve.
“Last week we delivered about 2.3 million parcels, and this week we’re expecting to deliver almost 2 million. We’ll be the last van in the driveway before Santa arrives.”
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The cut-off for sending parcels via NZ Post’s economy service passed last week, and Monday was the final deadline for items sent by courier.
“If you haven’t sent your parcel yet, you’ll need to send it right now to give it the best chance of arriving in time for Christmas,” Main said.
“We’ve brought on as much extra capacity as we possibly can to meet the huge demand for parcel delivery that we’ve seen this year.
“We’ve brought on hundreds of extra people, we’ve extended our operating hours and are processing 24/7, and we’ve re-designed our Auckland network to get parcels where they need to be as fast as we can.”
International supply chains continued to suffer as a result of Covid-19 and NZ Post was doing everything it could to get parcels delivered on time, Main said.
“But Kiwis should be aware that there are ongoing delays with parcels coming into New Zealand from overseas due to a lack of flights available, which is outside our control.
“We’re expecting some parcels, including some coming from Australia, to take longer to get into New Zealand than we’d like.”
NZ Post began to see record parcel numbers in August when the country first went into lockdown, and those volumes had increased again in the lead up to Christmas.
“Even compared to last lockdown in 2020, we’ve never seen anything like this before,” Main said.
Since Labour Weekend in October, NZ Post has delivered 16.5 million parcels, an increase of about 24 per cent on last year.
Its data predicted about 20 million parcels would be sent during busy online shopping season in 2021.
“New Zealanders have taken to online shopping in a way that has changed the retail landscape forever, and we’re just proud that we can be here to meet that demand,” Main said.