Leading Romanian courier company FAN Courier announced that it would develop its own locker chain in Romania (thus joining Sameday and Cargus) to provide more flexibility regarding the delivery time to its customers, with 1,000 units scheduled by mid-2023 upon a EUR 10 mln investment. The amount includes the purchase of lockers, monitoring systems, the development of new software and applications and all additional equipment.

The company has already installed the first 220 FANbox lockers in several cities in the country, and the network will double by the end of the year, News.ro reported. Within a few years, Fan Courier will make the service available to all the country's inhabitants.

The first FANbox lockers were installed in Bucharest and Ilfov County, Constanţa, Mangalia, Eforie Nord, Năvodari, Cluj-Napoca, Braşov, Arad, and Timisoara. Sibiu, Pitesti and Iași will follow in the coming weeks.

The largest chain of lockers in Romania is operated by the Sameday courier company, with 3,500 lockers in the country. Sameday is also expanding in Hungary and Bulgaria.

According to an Unlock study conducted by Sameday in April this year, 67% of consumers choose the online store based on the existence of the easybox delivery service. In September alone, 70% of Sameday customers used this out-of-home delivery service.

In September this year, another Romanian courier firm - Cargus - began developing its own locker chain. The company will place 300 parcel lockers in Bucharest as the first step of its plan to invest in the out-of-home delivery solution, SHIP&GO, with important benefits for online shops and consumers. Cargus envisages investing EUR 40 mln within 2.5 years in its country-wide locker chain to cover all major cities.

International parcel delivery service DPD, headquartered in France, also operates a chain of lockers across Europe - with 60 of them located in Romania.

iulian@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Facebook/Fan Courier)