Australian same-day delivery partner Sherpa is forecasting this Christmas period to surpass last year’s boom, with 650,000 same-day deliveries expected in November and December.
Retailers are being urged to plan for their last mile logistics as early as possible this year – Duncan Brett, CEO of Sherpa says has been long-preparing for this Christmas season.
“We know it will be by far our biggest yet, so we’ve ramped-up all areas of our operations accordingly,” he says.
“In particular, we’re predicting huge demand this festive season in the key categories of groceries, gifting, hampers, alcohol and general retail.”
Sherpa has completed more than 4.5 million deliveries since our inception in 2014 and expect to complete its five-millionth delivery before this year’s end.
According to Australia Post data released in August of this year, online purchases were up 27 per cent year-on-year in the 12 months to July 2021. Driving this strong growth were 5.6 million Australian households that purchased online in July 2021 – up 4.9 per cent from June 2021.
“We offer our retail partners a range of service options including full API integration for enterprise-level large volume bookings, bulk CSV upload services for large volume bookings without tech integration, or a simple single booking process via our website or the Sherpa app,” Duncan says.
The Australia Post Inside Australian Online Shopping eCommerce Update also reports that the online share of retail spend was 16.3 per cent during the 2021 Financial Year, up from 11.3 per cent in 2019. Online retail spend is now $52 billion in Australia, up 31 per cent year-on-year.