Weekend online buying habits deliver record mail volumes for Taranaki posties

Thursday, 24 May 2018

NZ Post area service delivery manager Jasen Hesseltine (left) with contractor David Nepia.

Stay-at-home consumers' infectious shopping for online specials during long weekends has helped increase mail deliveries at New Plymouth's postal operation centre by up to 2000 more parcels a week compared to a year ago.

The operations centre processed 28,000 tracked parcels and 87,000 mail items a week since moving to the integrated Waiwhakaiho site 12 months ago this month.

NZ Post area service delivery manager Jasen Hesseltine (right) with New Plymouth posties Jan Millynn (left) and Brenda Crummey.

'That's an increase of 2000 parcels delivered each week since January compared to last year at the previous site in New Plymouth, or 1500 more parcels year on year,' NZ Post spokeswoman Alice Paine said.

The site combined parcels and mail processing under one roof as the mail distribution hub in Taranaki and was a significant investment to the company's overnight courier and parcel distribution network in Taranaki, she said.

New Plymouth posties line up to deliver mail from the Waiwhakaiho postal operations centre.

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During the frenetic lead up to Christmas, from October through to early January, the volume handled by the 70 posties, couriers, Rural Delivery contractors, truck drivers and administration staff at the 2500sqm site skyrocketed to 42,000 tracked parcels, and as many as 130,000 mail items each week, Paine said.

NZ Post area service delivery manager Jasen Hesseltine said postal staff know whether the public have enjoyed their weekends or not by the amount of parcels sent due to online shopping.

'There's quite often online sales during long weekends, and everyone seems to be enjoying shopping online,' Hesseltine said.

A few days after the weekend, postal staff are flat out delivering parcels, he said.

'Each year we see a huge increase leading up to Christmas.

'This year the amount of parcels went up, and even though things settled down again in January, we have continued to process and deliver about 2000 more parcels a week than we did at the same time last year.'

Hesseltine said the increase in e-commerce, online shopping and parcel delivery was the focus in the future for the business.

The site is becoming increasingly busy processing 'My Food Bag' packages every Sunday, he said.

Every item for delivery out of the region from the New Plymouth centre is trucked to the Palmerston North hub where it is separated for deliveries to regions and main centres.

Mail for the Taranaki region is trucked back from Palmerston North, arriving at the centre around 11pm for staff to start processing from 2am to 7am.

Posties on electric carts deliver any mail item smaller than a shoe box, leaving the remainder of parcels to NZ Post contract couriers to deliver in Taranaki.

'About 75 per cent of mail processed at the centre is outbound, and 25 per cent inbound,' Hesseltine said.

The biggest increase has been the amount of online items from China, in particular consumers using website AliBaba, he said.

'We're in the business of delivering what people care about, so it's great to see so many people using e-commerce.'