By the end of 2024, sixteen solar lockers from the La Poste group will be accessible in Deux-Sèvres. La Poste, via its Pickup subsidiary, is increasing these new types of instructions which allow customers to receive their packages: the milestone of a thousand installations has been reached in France and 500 will follow by the end of December. Exponential growth, since the concept was only launched in spring 2024: between May and October, the park grew fourfold.
The principle: these lockers are equipped with batteries powered by solar energy. They can operate completely autonomously for ten days without sunlight: no need for work to connect them to the electricity network. This reduces the bill for the partner merchants of the system. The majority of them are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In Deux-Sèvres, fifteen municipalities are already equipped: Niort, Melle (with two lockers), Nueil-les-Aubiers, Bressuire, Coulonges-sur-l'Autize, Mauléon, Thouars, Moncoutant, Cerizay, Prahecq, Celles- sur-Belle, Champdeniers, Argentonnay, Chauray and Échiré. Fifteen other lockers managed by Pickup operate in the traditional way. More than 90,000 commercial brands have signed a contract to be distributed in this way: Cdiscount, Orange, Nespresso, Sephora, Mango and Decathlon.
These instructions are a response to the growth of online purchases: it is not always easy to collect your package when you are not at home all day. Pickup manages 17,000 relays and more than 3,500 lockers in France. Concretely, when a buyer chooses to have it delivered this way, they receive codes by SMS or email. All he has to do is tap them on the locker screen to collect his merchandise.
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