Australia Post invests $82 million in new parcel facility for Perth to meet online shopping demand
Australia Post is set to build a new parcel facility in Perth to meet the changing needs of Perth customers and businesses and keep pace with the strong demand driven by continued online shopping growth.
At 23,000 sqm, the new purpose-built facility will be larger than the playing field at Optus Stadium, with state-of-the-art automated sortation and the capacity to process 14,000 parcels per hour on its first day of operation.
Expected to be up and running in time for Christmas 2022, it has been designed with future scalability in mind, with the ability to process up to 23,000 parcels per hour.
The new facility will be located in Welshpool near the existing Perth Parcel Centre site and Welshpool Business Hub, and will include an onsite parcel distribution centre to get parcels into customers' hands even faster.
Australia Post Acting Group Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Rodney Boys said the $82 million commitment was part of the organisation's ongoing investment to meet growing eCommerce demand.
"Following last year's investment of $450 million, Australia Post continues to invest to meet the phenomenal growth of 30.8 per cent year on year in online shopping with Australians spending more than $50 billion online last year," Mr Boys said.
"More recently, Western Australia's online shopping grew 22.6 per cent in the 12 months to 31 August 2021 with close to one million WA households shopping online.
"The high-speed sorting machinery and automation at this new facility will allow parcels to be processed faster and provide our customers with increased tracking visibility thanks to more scanning events, and will also be safer for our people by significantly reducing manual handling."
Australia Post Head of Operations in Western Australia Angus Becsi said the new investment showed that Australia Post was working hard to improve deliveries for West Australians while the challenges of the pandemic continue.
"Impacts in other states do have a flow-on effect with our operations, so we know we need to keep investing in Western Australia to meet our customers' needs and help us to deliver as efficiently as possible," Mr Becsi said.
"In addition to the Welshpool facility announced today, we're also planning to deliver a new facility in Butler in October 2022, which will replace the current delivery centre in Clarkson, and we'll be adding close to 200 more electric delivery vehicles to our fleet this year to help our posties deliver more parcels in the lead up to Christmas."
