UK delivery company Yodel has reported revenue growth of 22% for the period running from December 2020 to December 2021, which has enabled it to invest £14m (US$19m) in its operations.
Within this investment, the company spent £13.25m (US$17.98m) on adding 250 trailers and 100 tractor units to its network. It also paid £1m (US$1.3m) to integrate the Merlin2 parcel sortation system in its Shaw sorting center in Manchester, UK. This growth created a total of 4,311 new jobs across its UK network.
In the six weeks leading up to December 24, Yodel’s volume went up 34.9% compared with the same period in 2020. The company saw triple-digit growth in fresh food and flowers and double-digit growth across all other categories, including alcohol, retail, garden and pet foods. However, volumes were down 1.6% compared with April to September 2021, when the UK was subject to Covid-19 restrictions.
Yodel has also announced that it has updated its customer app to offer customers the ability to personalize their delivery experience via the My Account section. This expansion of the My Account feature enables customers to store default delivery preferences. The company has also rolled out a digital app for its national sortation centers, added an image capture function to its driver app and developed its handheld devices.
Mike Hancox, CEO of Yodel, commented, “We have recorded a strong performance in the first half of this financial year and, thanks to our people’s resilience and the business’s flexibility, we have achieved significant growth since the start of the pandemic in 2020. The first half of this financial year has demonstrated that despite ongoing uncertainty caused by Covid-19, demand for e-commerce and doorstep delivery services remains as strong as ever and that Yodel is perfectly positioned, and prepared, to cater to changing customer needs. In the coming year, we expect to see the greater integration of technology into delivery service business models to improve customer experience across the industry, increasing the efficiency of supply chains to handle larger volumes as demand for online shopping continues to grow.”