Aramex wants more of market

The Dubai-based international logistics and courier giant Aramex wants to double its market share in Australia in the next two years.

Peter Lipinski CEO Aramex

The Dubai-based international logistics and courier giant Aramex wants to double its market share in Australia in the next two years as it expands the nation’s largest crowd sourcing operation in logistics known as Blu Couriers.

Aramex, which acquired Fastway Couriers four years ago, currently handles three million parcels per month through its network of almost 900 couriers and is gearing up for a 40 per cent increase in delivery volumes following the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

Aramex Australia chief executive Peter Lipinski said the Aramex warehouse at Chullora in Western Sydney normally handled close to 1.5 million parcels per month, but in December that will increase to well over 2 million.

He said Aramex estimated that it had about 5 per cent of the local e-commerce market versus the more than 75 per cent share enjoyed by Australia Post.

Japan Post recently put its Toll Global Express assets on the market but plans to retain ownership of Toll‘s logistics and forwarding businesses.

“My target is that we double our market share in two years. The market is expanding as well. Provided you look after the receivers’ needs and be nimble and listen to your customer and try to be creative, you will grow share,’’ Mr Lipinski said.

“COVID has been very bad the for the economy overall, but from the logistics sector it has been very positive. We have seen massive increases in volumes of freight. When Melbourne went into its most recent lockdown, volumes doubled.”

In the wake of the pandemic wine deliveries in general are 60 to 90 per cent up on their average volumes of last year and doubled in most places.

“We have seen a massive uptake too on flatpack furniture. It is not the favourite one with courier franchisees but we have seen that almost double. Especially when people were setting up home offices. It has been the same with workout equipment,’’ he said.

Aramex, which is listed on the Dubai Stock Exchange, is now in detailed discussions with a range of retailers to assist their e-commerce offerings in the post-COVID world.

The firm’s Blu Couriers business, based on the Uber transport model where courier drivers can use their own vehicles and follow route-directing systems to plot the deliveries on a map, has been performing strongly.

Last month Blu Couriers was named as the Winner for Service Innovation at the Australian Business Awards 2020.

“We have always focused on e-commerce. We started looking at what we needed to do to cope with different scenarios. Courier Franchisees are good for stable growth. When growth is rapid, you need to scale up very quick. We started testing the Blu Courier idea four years ago. It has been really successful,” Mr Lipinski said. “The growth has been staggering, we have doubled, if not tripled the number of Blue Couriers. It was first the capital cities, it is now migrating into regional areas immediately outside the capital cities. We have 28 locations around Australia so it is available to all of them.”

The service saw a significant increase in inquiries from people looking to become couriers during the lockdown and Mr Lipinski said he now wanted to expand the model to evening and weekend deliveries.

“We are looking at developing it further into different services. For example we aren’t doing evening and weekend shifts. We want to look at that going forward,’’ Mr Lipinski said.