Wednesday absolute last day to mail packages for Christmas

Monday, 18 December 2017

At a New Zealand storehouse in Ngaio, Wellington on Kaiwharawhara Road 5am is the busiest time of day.

Wednesday is the last day to mail packages and ensure they will arrive in time for Christmas.

New Zealand Post chief operating officer Mark Stewart expects its storehouses to process and ship more than 3 million letters and parcels a day this week.

Stewart said the final day for standard Christmas mail, Tuesday, will be the state-owned postal service's busiest day of the year.

NZ Post expects to deliver 41.5 million parcels and letters this Christmas season.

People sending their mail and parcels within New Zealand by Tuesday can use Standard Post, ParcelPost and ParcelPost Tracked to get their package under the tree in time, he said.

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The DHL distribution centre in Auckland is an integral part of the company's output of 37 packages per minute on average during the Christmas season.

But 'if you want to mail something within the country before Christmas, Wednesday is the day you've got to get it in by.

'Items being sent by FastPost, Courier Parcel and Courier and Signature Parcel need to be sent by December 20.'

The last day to mail Christmas packages via standard shipping is Tuesday December 19, express shipping's deadline is a day later.

He said package volume growth throughout the year, and especially at Christmas has been largely due to more Kiwis shopping online.

'New Zealanders are already thriving on the online shopping … the boom in e-commerce is driving that.'

NZ Post chief operating officer Mark Stewart says 3 million parcels and letters will be delivered every day this week in the lead up to Christmas.

Projections based on the company's top 50 customers and other large retailers meant NZ Post prepared for 20 per cent more parcels than last year, Stewart said.

NZ Post projections were for 41.5 million letters and parcels in December.

DHL Express New Zealand, another package delivery service, had its biggest delivery day so far last Friday.

Spokeswoman Victoria Russell said DHL staff would deliver 37 parcels a minute on average throughout December - or one parcel every 1.6 seconds.

NZ Post has hired an extra 600 staff for the holidays, 200 vans, 13 line-haul trucks, and an additional Boeing 737 freighter jet to make shipments across the country.

'This would be the fourth plane in the NZ Post arsenal, that delivers next-day-service packages, often across the Cook Strait,' Stewart said.

The company has opened two new operations centres in Taranaki and an automated site at Christchurch Airport this year.

Stewart expects the company to invest in additional automated sites as the business continues to grow.

He said the automated centres did not put jobs at risk because there was is still so much volume growth in packages that there was still a need to hire more staff.

NZ Post has announced changes PostShop stores earlier this month and has begun outsourcing more postal services to franchisees.

It is understood the company is planning to close more stores, due to falling letter volumes.