Hermes delivered an extra 250 million parcels in the UK in 2020, reaching 630 million deliveries for the year.

Almost 72 million parcels were delivered between Black Friday and Christmas Eve compared to around 42 million in the same period in 2019.

Outside of the traditionally busy peak winter months, Hermes also doubled deliveries year-on-year in April, May and June.

The volumes were driven by lockdown restrictions and also consumer demand for alternatives to Royal Mail.

Hermes Send, the business dedicated to consumer-to-consumer parcel deliveries, either from a local ParcelShop or via a courier collection, saw an increase of 104 per cent across the year, with 10 million parcels delivered in December alone.

To support the growth, Hermes opened five new depots and increased its fleet by 2,500, creating 10,500 new jobs to boot.

Martijn de Lange, CEO of Hermes UK, said: “As a result of the pandemic and lockdown we had to fast-forward our five-year plan and deliver it in just five months. The level of parcel volumes that we handled was what we had originally planned for in 2025.”

He added: “We aren’t seeing many signs that this demand is slowing down so far in 2021 and are continuing our ongoing investment into developing our infrastructure and proposition, supported by an industry-leading app.”

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