Do you ever say to yourself “I wish I could find a recently published, easy to read and insightful report on…”? That’s exactly what we said when discussing the challenges and opportunities facing the postal and parcel sector.

Imagine our surprise and delight when a quick search revealed the Postal and Parcel Trend Report 2024 produced by the Postal Innovation Platform in partnership with Stamp Free Limited.

Here’s our summary of the report:

1. Key 2024 trends include digitalisation, ecommerce, sustainability, tough economic environment and increasing competition.
2. Technologies which will have the greatest impact are; automation, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and cybersecurity. Automation of postal and parcel processes will have higher priority in countries with high labour costs
3. Competition, market shares, adoption and integration of new technologies, talent and workforce and cybersecurity represent the main challenges facing the sector.
4. The top investment priorities include ecommerce (fulfilment solutions, marketplaces, returns and customer convenience). first and last mile infrastructure, sustainability, digitalisation and C2C solutions.
5. Returns are a major feature of the ecommerce landscape. Convenient access points (PUDOs, lockers etc.) plus label free options are the most important factors for returns and the growing C2C market.
6. Sustainability focus areas include; delivery efficiency, route optimisation, fleet transformation, out-of-home (OOH) solutions i.e. parcel shops and lockers, packaging, wrapping and label-free solutions.
7. Big Data and AI represent major opportunities but also challenges for the postal and parcel sector. Data gathering, storing and cleaning demands significant resource investments before the benefits of data and AI can be realised.

You can download the executive summary and full report here.

Thank you Postal Innovation Platform and Stamp Free Limited for producing the report and making it available for free. It’s a great piece of work.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash