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Delivery investment and innovation from Hermes and My Parcel Delivery

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Hermes today announced Sunday home deliveries, in what it claims is a first for a UK consumer delivery company.

Initially, shoppers will able to place retail orders on Saturdays for next-day tracked delivery via Hermes.

Carole Woodhead, chief executive at Hermes UK, said: “The retail sector has been trading seven days a week for a long time now and by introducing this service we are giving online shoppers the same service.

“We recently commissioned some independent research that found that two thirds of online shoppers found Sunday deliveries appealing. Quite simply it fits around their increasingly busy lifestyles and is often a day they can guarantee being at home. As a result we believe our new Sunday service will increase the first time delivery success rate and overall customer satisfaction.”

• Meanwhile, start-up My Parcel Delivery has won more than £1m in investment in order to develop innovative ways of delivering ecommerce parcels. The three-year-old Manchester-based parcel delivery comparison website says it will focus on providing mobile applications, improving its eBay shipping tool and its bulk delivery tool.

The business launched in 2010 and now sees 600,000 parcels sent through the website each year using couriers including DPD, City Link, Parcelforce and Hermes.

Managing director David Grimes said: “We launched My Parcel Delivery in the middle of a deep recession, but it was an ideal time as businesses were looking for ways to cut their shipping costs and we were there to provide money-saving, time-saving and hassle-free services when they needed it most.

“The ecommerce sector has seen tremendous growth in the past 12 months and the traditional approach of taking parcels to the Post Office and queuing should be a thing of the past for the entrepreneurial firms that are fuelling the turnaround in on-line retail and the wider economy.”

My Parcel Delivery’s development capital investment came from Manchester-based Praetura Capital, whose Mike Fletcher and David Foreman will join the start-up’s board.

David Foreman, partner at Praetura Capital, said: “We believe that David has the drive and ambition to build a class leading solution in the broader ecommerce sector.

“The business has been growing at an impressive rate thus far and we believe that the development capital provided should enable the company to invest in technology and people which will allow it to accelerate that growth further.”

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