Investment in ecommerce service aggregator next step after CouriersPlease purchase
Quantium Solutions (Australia), one of the pack circling Australia Post’s parcels market share, has invested in ecommerce service aggregator Hubbed.
Singapore Post’s Australian arm, which bought New Zealand Post Group’s Australian courier company, Couriers Please, in December is to gain 30 per cent of Hubbed along with access to a network of some 680 newsagents to provide a parcel delivery service in major cities nationally.
The use of newsagents is part of rival Toll’s strategy and Hubbed says it plans to offer parcel drop-offs and sale of delivery products in the near future.
Quantium sees the deal as an adjunct to CouriersPlease’s door-to-door operations, with out-of-working-hours availability through the newsagent shops.
“We are investing to develop an ecommerce ecosystem to provide seamless access to customers in Australia, and growing markets in Asia Pacific,” Quantium CEO and SingPost group chief operating officer Dr Sascha Hower says.
“The ecosystem comprises end-to-end solutions from warehousing to convenient touchpoints, flexible doorstep delivery and track and trace features.
“This partnership with Hubbed, which complements CouriersPlease, will help strengthen our ecommerce last-mile capability in the regional ecommerce logistics value chain in the region.”
Hubbed is bullish about where its business model is going.
“There are more products to come from Hubbed so do stay tuned,” Hubbed founder and CEO David Mclean says.
“Singapore Post, alongside CouriersPlease and The Australian Newsagents Federation are key parts of our strategy.”
“We have worked closely with newsagents to build the Hubbed platform which has allowed them to expand beyond parcel services to provide a wide range of other products and services like bill payments and energy referrals.
“This, I believe, will transform the perception of exactly what these great retailers have to offer.
On the prospects for the growth of ecommerce in Australia, Mclean says: “Simply put its growth and more growth. The Australian Bureau of Statistics tells us that Aussies spent some $10 billion in 2012 through online purchases and this is set to grow by more than three times to pass $36 billion by 2016.”