how Colissimo copes with the peak in deliveries at the end of the year

« With Covid, everyone has gotten into the habit of buying on the Internet, even people who didn't do it at all before the health crisis, explains Jean-Yves Gras, general manager of Colissimo. During the pandemic, we recorded a 40% jump in deliveries and it will continue in 2024. The increase from one year to the next is between 3 and 5%. » In France, half of these parcels are transported by services or subsidiaries of La Poste: Chronopost, DPD or, therefore, Colissimo, whose national manager was this Friday, December 13 in Cadaujac, on the platform which serves all of Nouvelle -Aquitaine.

There are 17 in France, but this one, located a stone's throw from the A62, is a pioneer: it was the first to have both a pure logistics part and a delivery part, which serves the entire south of the Bordeaux metropolitan area. “And the processing of packages has been optimized,” assures Yann Briand, the director. 95% of our packages are delivered within twenty-four hours in the five departments stretching from Vendée to Pyrénées-Atlantiques. »

7 million packages

This is particularly necessary during this end-of-year period. In November-December 2023, the La Poste group had delivered 100 million Colissimo – a fifth of its annual volume – and its managers expect to do at least as much in 2024. “In Cadaujac, this represents 7 million parcels. We will go from 150,000 to 260,000 per day, with peaks at 350,000.”

To respond to this, Colissimo has implemented a process which limits the time between the arrival of parcels on the platform and their departure for delivery to less than five minutes. “They pass through reading tunnels in which their tags are read by cameras. Software then assigns them to the points from which they will be routed to their recipients, explains Jean-Luc Bourdiol, production manager. The rounds are prepared from this passage on the conveyor belt, without going through an intermediate sorting center. »

Between shipping – by individuals or by large companies like Amazon (four Colissimo out of ten) – and delivery, each package is flashed four times, which makes it possible to follow its progress. But one of the keys to this delivery is also the employment of handlers. Three thousand are recruited in France for the end of the year, including 200 in Cadaujac. “We train them from November,” says Yann Briand. We have designed very precise handling techniques which, in addition to ensuring employee safety, make it possible to process 19,000 packages per hour, with peaks of more than 21,000.”