Busiest day of the year: NZ Post delivering Christmas

19 December 2019

This week is the busiest week of the year for NZ Post, with Thursday 19 December set to be the busiest day of all, as the parcel delivery business brings on extra flights, trucks, vans and people to get New Zealanders’ Christmas presents under the tree in time for the 25th.

Last week NZ Post delivered about 300,000 parcels on any given day, but Thursday 19 December is likely to see over 350,000 parcels – the busiest day of the year.

NZ Post will be working hard over the next week to deliver hundreds of thousands of parcels in time for Christmas Day.

NZ Post Chief Operating Officer Mark Stewart says there’s still time to courier your parcel. “Our couriers are accepting parcels until Monday 23 December and we’ve brought on extra vans and people to help us manage those final couple of days.

“Our delivery people are working flat-out, delivering thousands of parcels every day. We’ve set up special hydration and snack stations so that our team can take a pit-stop. It’s important that the people working hard to deliver Christmas are well looked after.

“In 2018 we delivered over 14.5 million parcels over November and December – that’s about three parcels per second. This year we’ve already delivered over 200,000 more parcels than this time last year and we’re expecting this to increase in the busiest week of the year.

“This record number of parcels is due in a large part to the growth in online shopping,” says Mark. “NZ Post’s recent The Full Download 2019 report showed that online shopping grew 16% in 2018 – that’s eight times faster than in-store shopping.

Traditionally the online shopping season started much closer to Christmas, but is now starting earlier in the year due to sales events such as Singles’ Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. “From October onward, Kiwis tend to shop online for things like clothes and shoes, and homewares and electronics – all those classic Kiwi Christmas presents like togs and e-readers. During the last couple of months of the year we see spending online on these items increase about 50%.

“It’s not just Christmas presents that are coming through our network,” says Mark. “This week we’re also delivering almost a million cherries and trucks full of hams. We’ve been working with cherry and ham producers to create bespoke services – ensuring that your Christmas treats arrive beautifully fresh and ready for the Christmas table.”

Meanwhile, NZ Post is also busy responding to Kiwi kids on behalf of Santa. Children have the opportunity to Write to Santa with NZ Post until 6pm on Monday 23 December. Physical letters to and from Santa closed last week, in order to ensure children got their replies in time, but online messages to Santa are still open.

To make and send a digital postcard to Santa, visit www.nzpost.co.nz/writetosanta. Email responses take 24 hours from when your digital postcard is sent and responses from Santa can be received in either te reo Māori or English.

ENDS

© Scoop Media