The post office wants to allocate package quotas to the 100 largest senders because it fears being overwhelmed by the increase in packet traffic. The distance selling sector is alarmed by the situation and wants to find solutions with the yellow giant.
La Poste informed its 100 largest parcel customers on Thursday that it wished to introduce, with immediate effect, a quota per working day of the number of standard parcels. This as an emergency measure to protect its employees and maintain the parcel supply in Switzerland, said Oliver Flüeler, spokesperson for La Poste at Keystone-ATS.
However, these measures will not be implemented immediately as planned, said Oliver Flüeler. La Poste continues Friday the dialogue with customers and other logistics players to find common solutions. She will also submit a request to the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications.
Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, Swiss Post has faced an enormous increase in the number of packages. Despite the many measures already taken, the basic service is called into question. “We can no longer cope with the volume,” said Oliver Flüeler. The mere deployment of additional staff is not enough because “we must comply with the requirements of social distancing”.
Work together
“The worst fears have come true,” said the Swiss Distance Selling Association (ASVAD) in a statement on Friday. Without measures, the distribution of packages risks collapsing. ASVAD wants to quickly find solutions with the yellow giant to maintain package delivery.
It proposes several measures in this direction. In particular, it wants to suspend the shipment of small goods from abroad. This represents more than 100,000 shipments every day. ASVAD believes that these capacities should be released for national trade.
Oliver Flüeler underlines that it is urgent to find a solution “if we do not want to risk a collapse of the distribution of parcels in Switzerland”. This will only be possible if all the actors involved work together to ensure that “the quantities do not overwhelm the system”. (ats / nxp)
Created: 03.04.2020, 11h27
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