Europe's leading postal operators, such as Belgium Post, Royal Mail, Nordic Post and Norway Post, said at the Last Mile logistics event in London that investment in non-home delivery will grow in the coming years, while postal companies should adopt a variety of end-delivery methods to ensure customer demand is met.

End-delivery also needs more cooperation to cope with the shortage of drivers and vehicles and the need for environmental protection, participants said.

Belgium Post said it would invest more in non-home delivery methods in the future, adding extra lockers for returns to reduce the number of boxes occupied by returned items. At present, 50% of the use of the express cabinet belongs to the user side. The news comes just days after Belgian Post launched a new service that allows residents to drop off packages to other couriers, reducing the number of trips they have to make. Belgium Post has 2,800 parcel collection outlets in the country and is still adding them, the company said. Belgium Post's diversified terminal delivery methods include express cabinets, parcel outlets and post offices.

Nordic Post has about 12,000 delivery cabinets and plans to increase that number to 30,000 over the next few years. The more packages delivered in a single delivery, the lower the cost and the smaller the environmental impact, according to the group's senior strategist. Although the group launched the parcel cabinet network open to carriers in 2019, the promotion is not very ideal due to some trust issues. Delivery companies consider the end business so important that they do not want it to be handled elsewhere. But it's true that there is more collaboration at the end. In Denmark, DHL and Bring are both using the express cabinets of Nordic Post. Considering the cost, it is more reasonable to share the Internet. Therefore, the group hopes to achieve integration and cooperation at the end.

Matthew Lawlor, head of delivery design at Royal Mail, said: "There will be a shortage of vehicles in the future, so we need to keep more vehicles." In addition, postal companies should pay attention to the carbon emissions generated by each package to gain customers' understanding and trust.

However, some postal companies are keen on home delivery. Norwegian Post said it planned to strengthen its home delivery model because of a decline in the use of its delivery and collection outlets. Fredrik Lindqvist, head of system and network development at Norwegian Post, said that in 2017, 85% of the company's e-commerce deliveries were non-home delivery and only 2% were home delivery. According to a 2018 market study, 46% of consumers in Norway choose non-home delivery and 45% choose home delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic has also accelerated the trend, with a 460 percent increase in home delivery, a phenomenon the company has not seen in 20 years. In 2021, Norwegian Post's non-home delivery volume fell from 85% to 52%.

On the one hand, Norway Post is increasing its investment in receiving and delivery outlets, and on the other hand, it is also stepping up the development of a new generation of digital home delivery services. It has launched three mobile applications SortApp, Glow and Motivero, and has set up Glow Technology, a technology company, to provide software sales services.