AN POST HAS said it expects parcel volumes to reach 3.3 million each week between now and mid-December in Ireland’s “busiest ever online shopping fortnight”.

This is a 230% increase on the same period last year when more than one million parcels were delivered each week.

An Post said the increase in parcels in recent weeks has been driven by a mix of shop closures due to Covid-19 restrictions, online retail offers and early Christmas shopping. 

Recently, the service has delivered 2.5 million parcels each week. An Post said the next two weeks will be driven by a surge of support for Irish retailers, along with Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

The CEO of An Post, David McRedmond, said the service is able to deal with this surge in volumes.

“Processing and delivery are taking longer than normal and we are delivering record volumes of parcels seven days a week,” he said in a statement. 

We have 1,000 extra staff helping us this Christmas and our delivery staff have new scanning technology and electric vehicles to help them get parcels and letters to customers as quickly as possible.

The service said 7 December is the latest date for posting parcels and letters with standard service to the United States, Canada, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

12 December is the latest date for European destinations, with 17 December being the latest date to deliver cards to Europe. 

Earlier this month, the postal service asked customers to “please bear with us” as it dealt with a 130% increase in the volume of packages and parcels compared to 2019.