Mother's Day rush: Courier's 'Four Christmases' of parcels backs up

Megan Heeney (left) Kaye van Booma and Sharni McGregor from beauKayes are working hard to keep up with the Mother's Day demand. Photo / Paul Taylor

A mountain of parcels the equivalent of "four Christmases" has Hawke's Bay firm Aramex calling for an army of wannabe couriers ahead of Mother's Day.

Aramex chief executive Scott Jenyns said that, in the early stages of lockdown, the parcel volume was about 30 per cent of a normal day but, by the Tuesday after Anzac weekend, it jumped by a whopping 200 per cent.

He said the build-up and increased number of parcels over the period was the equivalent of having "four Christmases at once".

But it's not just parcels needing delivery. Florists experienced unprecedented demand when the introduction of level 3 enabled them to open just in time for Mother's Day.

Owner of beauKaye Florist in Taradale, Kaye van Booma, said Mother's Day is a florist's biggest day of the year.

"Mother's Day normally means for us a month's worth of work in a few days but, with people not able to go see their mothers this weekend, they do the next best thing and send flowers, which has just seen things busier than ever."

She said that, although they were busy, it was a "good kind of busy", and the support they were getting from local people and businesses wanting to buy flowers was just amazing.

"Many florists will be a bit overrun at the moment with the amount of orders coming in but I think we would all like to be busy then have no business at all."

Owner of Zinnia Floral Design in Havelock North, Jenn Wright, said that, over the past couple of days, she had been working up to 15 hour days just to keep up with the demand but that she had a great team of florists to help her out.

"It's just been crazy busy with the amount of orders coming in," she said.

Aramex New Zealand CEO Scott Jenyns says that, at the start of Covid-19 lockdown, parcel volume was about 30 per cent of a normal day but, during level 3, it jumped by a whopping 200 per cent. Photo / File

Last year, Aramex launched a new delivery service called Blu Couriers, which was based on the Uber transport model whereby courier drivers could use their own vehicles armed with a blu app that acted much like the Uber app and directed the driver on the most efficient way to deliver a parcel.

Jenyns believes creating a fleet of Blu Courier drivers is the immediate answer to speeding up unprecedented online retail buying and the subsequent influx of residential deliveries.

"There maybe people that have lost their jobs and are looking for a new career or are interested in buying a new business and that's the opportunity with Aramex."