Competitor Watch

Delivery company DPD will have hired 20,000 new workers across Europe by the end of the year in response to the surge in demand for parcels as a result of the ongoing pandemic.

The hiring spree underlines the sharp boost to business for groups such as Amazon, Hermes and DHL Express as they recruit thousands of extra staff to cope with soaring orders due to coronavirus.

DPD, which is owned by France’s La Poste, expects a 23 per cent increase in package deliveries this year, to 1.6bn, while revenue is forecast to rise 30 per cent to more than €10bn.

Chief executive, Boris Winkelmann, who took charge in June, said there had been ‘a tsunami of parcels,’ since Easter, with orders having risen 30-35 per cent in the second quarter.

He described extra demand as a ‘growth catalyst’ that had ‘fast-forwarded us three years in our trajectory,’ with the company earmarking €500m for new depots in the UK, France and Holland next year.

The parcel boom has also prompted ecommerce platform Amazon and parcel delivery group Hermes to add a combined 20,500 recruits in the UK alone since July, while logistics company DHL Express Europe has hired more than 3,000 extra people.

DPD, which accounts for a third of La Poste’s revenue, said a quarter of the new staff would be direct employees, while the rest would be taken on as subcontractors. It stressed the hiring spree was not seasonal to help with the run-up to Christmas. All workers would be needed for permanently higher levels of demand.

As part of the 20,000 new recruits, DPD is also hiring 6,000 drivers, warehouse staff and mechanics in the UK, which it considers fertile ground with nearly 90 per cent of people in Britain purchasing an item online by the end of 2019, according to Eurostat — the highest of any European country.