Parcel volume in Europe

In 2020, the European Postal Service delivered around 8.2 billion parcels, an increase of 18.1 percent compared to the previous year. This nearly doubles the 4.2 billion parcels shipped in Europe in 2012. 

Sustained growth during the COVID-19 pandemic

Strict lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic affected businesses all around the world, limiting in-store sales. As a result, the parcel delivery market in Europe saw exceptionally high volumes in 2020. The pandemic inadvertently boosted dynamism in the market as most people ordered their daily needs via online retailers. Effecting not only Europe, restrictions forced people to turn to online shopping all around the world. This change in consumer behavior is foreseen to be persistent until 2026 at which point global parcel shipping is expected to reach 266 million packages.

Germany - European parcel market leader

In 2020, the German postal services delivered more than 3.8 billion packages across the territory of Germany. This volume of parcel operations made the German market to open up a significant lead among other European countries, specifically the French market, the second-largest one, which handled approximately one billion parcels in the same year. The courier, express, and parcels (CEP) market has undergone a consequential digital transformation through exceeding research and development investments. German market might secure its leading place in the future since postal service companies continuously invest in innovations to uplift the market and their revenues. 

Total volume of domestic parcels in Europe* from 2012 to 2020 (in billions)

Characteristic	Number of parcels in billions
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Release date

December 2021

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Region

Europe

Survey time period

2012 to 2020

Supplementary notes

* The data is the sum of given entries for the European Union 27 member states (EU-27) and Iceland, Norway, North Macedonia, Switzerland and the U.K. Some data for countries were not provided every year by the source.
** The value for France contains a break in the time series.
Values have been rounded.
To retrieve the data, select the unit of measure as thousand and postal statistics indicator as domestic parcel services.

Domestic letter mail traffic refers to the total volume of parcel items handled by all operators. It comprises courier, express and parcels services. Postal operators include those operators who perform express services using the service provider’s own end-to-end delivery network.

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