Logistics

Packhelp, a startup from Poland that allows users to design their packaging, has raised 8.8 million euros in a Series A round. White Star Capital led the investment, while existing investors participated. With the money, Packhelp wants to boost its growth in Europe.

French supermarket Monoprix, a subsidiary of Casino Group, wants to further expand its partnership with Amazon. The two companies started working together last year, with Amazon delivering groceries in France through its Amazon Prime Now program.

Russian footwear retail chain Obuv Rossii has announced a new project with DPD, the largest commercial operator of express delivery in Russia. The two companies have completed a trial of pickup points in Obuv Rossii's shoes stores. The pilot was launched with about 20 shops, but in the future, 150 more stores will be connected.

Ecommerce is becoming more and more important for Dutch postal company PostNL. Last year, 48 percent of the company's total turnover came from revenue derived from ecommerce logistics.

A new study focuses on the strengths and potential capabilities in checkout, shipping and returns of the 100 largest online shops in Germany. It shows that online retailers are throwing away millions of euros in potential sales every month, because after checkout retailers don't focus on the customer anymore.

Deutsche Post DHL will be focusing more and more on the network of Packstations it has across the country and less on innovations such as delivery robots and parcel boxes installed at customers' homes.

Zalando has opened a new fulfillment center in Sweden. In Brunna, near Stockholm, the online fashion player has opened a fulfillment center that's approximately 30,000 square meters big and gives place to around 500 employees as well as 50 autonomous mobile robots.

Supermercato24, a same-day delivery service for online grocery, has announced a partnership with Lidl in Italy. Together, the two companies will allow Italian Lidl customers to order groceries from home and have them delivered at their doorstop on the same day, even within one hour.

Printing and fulfillment service Printful will open a new fulfillment center in Riga, Latvia. The company has outgrown its current facility, which is located in the same city. The new site is currently under construction and is said to open in May. The new fulfillment center will open close to the company's logistics partners and the Riga International Airport.

Couriers from PostNL who deliver parcels to customers' homes, will now also accept parcels that need to be returned to an online retailer. By offering this new service, PostNL hopes to the reduce the amount of trips to the supermarket or store, where most customers hand over their returns.

DHL Express will build a new logistics hub in Denmark, that will arise at Copenhagen Airport. If the hub becomes operational, which is planned to happen in 2023, the logistics services provider will be able to handle nearly 37,000 packages per hour, 24 hours a day.

Dutch online retailer Bol.com is expanding its network of pick-up points in Belgium. The Ahold Delhaize-owned company will open locations in the supermarkets of Delhaize in Flanders. Consumers in Belgium already had the option to pick up their Bol.com orders at the supermarkets of Albert Heijn.

Correos, the national postal service of Spain, has distributed more than 106 million packages in 2018. This represents an increase of 61 percent compared to the total amount of packages it managed during the year before.

One in eight online purchases in Germany is sent back to the online retailer. Currently, 12 percent of products ordered online won't stay with the customer. Two years ago, this share was still at 10 percent.

DHL has plans to concentrate more on ecommerce in Turkey. The German logistics player considers Turkey as an important regional hub which could fuel growth in the Middle Eastern and European markets. DHL is setting up an operations center at Istanbul Airport as first step of this plan.