DPD hires 6000 new employees to cater to “biggest boom in online retailing in the UK’s history”
DPD is hiring 6,000 new employees and is injecting £200 million into its network to cater for the demand from “the biggest boom in online retailing in the UK’s history."
The delivery giant announced today that it was making an “unprecedented investment in our infrastructure and people” to make sure it could attend to the high demand for online delivery which it believes is the "new normal".
The British delivery parcel service said it would hire 2,500 new full-time depot, hub and management positions alongside 3,500 new delivery drivers.
The company will also inject a total of £200 million into its delivery channels to extend its next day delivery services, as well as £100 million on new vehicles.
In addition, DPD will also invest £60 million on building 15 new regional distribution depots this year, this is 10 more than it had planned before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although non-essential stores have began to re-open, DPD stressed that online sales would continue to grow throughout the rest of the year.
DPD CEO Dwain McDonald said: “DPD has been one of the fastest growing major companies in the UK in the last 10 years, due to the growth in e-commerce.”
“But what we have seen in recent months is potentially a much more significant shift in behaviour, and we believe elements of it will be permanent. As a company, we’ve been dealing with rapid growth and ongoing investment cycles for a long time, but this is a very significant moment.
“I do think the High Street will bounce back from where things are now, but we have to base our modelling on our conversations with retailers and their projections. It looks like there will remain a much greater reliance on e-commerce in the future – that’s going to be our ‘new normal’.
“This investment and expansion mean that we will continue to be right there for our retail customers, alongside them, with the capacity to cope with the demand they are seeing online.”
