Internet commerce continues to boom. Strong sales figures on the e-commerce market are also making themselves felt at the international DPDgroup. As the No. 2 on the European parcel market, DPDgroup delivers more than 5.2 million domestic and international parcels every day, in the process setting a new record in 2018: compared to 2017 its parcel volume increased by a further 7 percent to 1.3 billion parcels.

The network has also expanded considerably. DPDgroup now has more than 42,000 Pickup parcelshops throughout Europe in a fully integrated network. The company has Europe's leading road-based cross-border network with its own organisations in 23 countries. DPDgroup currently delivers to 230 countries worldwide. In 2018 cross-border shipping also recorded above-average sales growth of 13.6 percent. DPD is also fulfilling its role as a digital innovation leader. Its Predict service, which is unique in the industry, features map-supported live tracking, multiple options for redirecting a parcel and a delivery forecast which is accurate to one hour. This service is now available in 22 countries and also works accurately across borders.

Thanks to this service portfolio 360,000 customers are currently working with DPDgroup on a regular basis, and the number is rising. In 2018 around 59 percent of DPDgroup's Europe-wide parcel volumes were still accounted for by B2B parcel shipments from business shippers to commercial consignees. However, the proportion of parcels sent by business shippers to private consignees is on the increase. In this B2C segment the figures for 2018 rose very strongly, with an increase of more than 16 per cent and a 41 per cent share of overall volumes. For comparison, in 2017 the ratio of B2B to B2C was still 61 to 39 per cent.

The extent to which e-commerce now has an influence on parcel numbers is shown by another remarkable statistic. In contrast to previous years, in 2018 for the first time ever the highest daily delivery volume was not reached immediately before Christmas Eve. In fact the peak day was 29 November - Cyber Monday. On this day DPDgroup delivered 9 million parcels throughout Europe - more than 2 million of them in Germany.