Dutch retailer Albert Heijn has announced that it has teamed up with bol.com and Budbee to introduce parcel lockers for online orders.
The collaboration will see Albert Heijn install parcel lockers at 700 larger Albert Heijn stores, where shoppers can collect and return their packages from bol.com and webshops affiliated with Budbee.
The initiative aims to offer online customers a more sustainable and flexible delivery option.
The parcel lockers will replace bol.com collection points in almost all Albert Heijn stores, the retailer added.
Vincent Weijers, COO of bol.com, said, “Every day, customers order many items from bol.com. We naturally want to deliver those tens of thousands of orders per day to our customers quickly, efficiently and as sustainably as possible.
“With this flexible, smart and scalable innovation, we have the ambition to increase the convenience and service for our customers and to make the delivery of our parcels even more sustainable.”
A Sustainable Solution
Deliveries to Budbee's parcel lockers in the Netherlands are made with vehicles running on fossil-free and renewable fuels.
A Budbee parcel locker offers space for 37 to 258 parcels, allowing the courier to deliver tens to hundreds of parcels simultaneously with one delivery.
Jørgen Höppener, general manager BeNeLux at Budbee, said, “At Budbee we are constantly looking for new opportunities to make the e-commerce sector greener and more customer-friendly.
“We are therefore very proud that we are launching this in-store solution with such large Dutch partners. In combination with our technology, we are making sustainable online shopping available to an even larger group of people.”
Rollout Plan
Albert Heijn is rolling out the first set of lockers this week in fifteen stores in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Over the next two years, it will be expanded to 700 stores, the company added.
The parcel safes are located in or directly outside the Albert Heijn stores and consist of safes of different sizes.
Customers who opt to pick up their package at an Albert Heijn store will receive a message about the delivery details after ordering, including a code to open the safe.
Marit van Egmond, CEO of Albert Heijn, said, “Customers are increasingly experiencing the convenience of digital. We see this in the use of self-scan and the AH app in which everything comes together digitally.
“The introduction of parcel lockers makes it even easier for customers to pick up or return a parcel. I am proud of the collaboration with bol.com and Budbee, together we create synergy and further flesh out our omnichannel strategy.”
© 2022 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest technology news. Article by Dayeeta Das. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
