Australia Post employs addition 600 casual to keep up with rising demand from online shopping amid COVID-19 lockdown

Australia Post are recruiting 600 extra casuals in order to manage significant increases in demand for parcel delivery.

Australia post have also opening an addition 15 processing facilities to keep up with the high volume of parcels being delivered as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown measures.

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Parcel deliveries around the country have continued to average almost two million parcels per day since just before Easter.

These volumes have almost doubled in the last four weeks, up by 90 per cent compared to last year, as more householders shop online as they self-isolate. 

Australia Post Acting Group Chief Operating Officer, Rod Barnes, said everyone was working hard to manage significant delays impacting delivery of parcels.

"With our business adapting to the challenges the current pandemic presents, our normal practice of delivery has been impacted.  We are experiencing significant delivery delays due to limited flights, hygiene and social distancing requirements in our network to preserve the community's safety, and an increase in parcel volumes as more people shop online," he said.

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"For the last four weeks, we have been operating our processing and delivery services seven days a week, with our dedicated staff working on rotation over the 24-hour period, each day.

"We appreciate that delays can be frustrating and want to reassure that our people are working hard to get customer's parcels to them safely and as quickly as possible.    

As letter volumes continue to fall, it announced a change in the frequency of metropolitan letter deliveries to every second day freeing up posties to be retrained and redeployed into delivery vans to help process parcels.

"This retraining of 2000 posties is all part of a broader Australia Post push to transform the business, while also managing significant disruption brought about by different lifestyles under COVID19 restrictions," Mr Barnes said.