Ukrainian postal and courier company Nova Poshta has found that the number of online orders in the country has increased in the fourth week of the war with Russia.
Among the most popular categories of goods ordered by Ukrainians were clothing, footwear, automotive products and spare parts, medical supplies (including medicines), food, cosmetics and pet products.
At the beginning of the invasion, the volume of parcels through Nova Poshta had dropped to 20 times less than it before the invasion. Prior to the Russian invasion, the company delivered one million shipments every day, 70% of which were online store orders. However, during the first week of the war, customers sent an average of 50,000 parcels a day – 5% of the daily parcel volume pre-war. People have also stopped collecting parcels, with Nova Poshta now holding up to two million items.
To help Ukrainian online businesses recover quickly, Nova Poshta has posted a list of the largest online stores in operation. Currently, there are more than 200 stores on the list, offering everything from medicines to auto parts.
Sergey Kravchenko, head of research at Nova Poshta, said, “If in the second week of the war an average of 100,000-125,000 parcels were transported per day, then since March 21 we have recorded 350,000 shipments, of which 60% are online orders. Ukrainians ordered 200,000 goods per day online. This is still five times less than it was in the pre-war period, but there is a steady growth in the number of online purchases.”