Forging a new future … What changes ahead for HB economy?

29/07/2020

NZ Post-owned CourierPost was only starting to get through the 150,000 parcels accumulated at its warehouses by the end of May, while concurrently dealing with 300,000 new parcels a day.

Aramex New Zealand (formerly Fastway Couriers) expected demand to stay high for months and was scaling up with courier franchisee recruitment and Blu Couriers, a new crowd-sourcing Uber-style platform.

Zane Townshend, Aramex Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne regional manager, says the initial impact of Covid-19 played havoc. During Level 4, business dropped back to nothing but by level 3 it was bigger than Christmas.

“Christmas, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are peak times for us and recent levels far surpassed those volumes to the point that it was almost impossible for us and other courier companies to keep up with the backload.”

Townshend called up friends and family to man the vehicles and help sort the parcels. A big part of the demand was orders from supermarkets, pharmacies and other outlets that had an online presence.

Based on the current demand and international trends he believes demand will continue based largely on new habits of online purchasing encouraged by the Covid-19 lockdown.