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75 self-collection lockers to be set up at Punggol and Bukit Panjang estates by mid-2018

SINGAPORE — Instead of waiting at home for their online shopping purchases to be delivered, Punggol and Bukit Panjang residents can soon pick up their parcels from 75 lockers dotting their estates instead.

Potential vendor solutions available for the locker system proposed by the IMDA, which can be used by all couriers. Photo: IMDA

Potential vendor solutions available for the locker system proposed by the IMDA, which can be used by all couriers. Photo: IMDA

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SINGAPORE — Instead of waiting at home for their online shopping purchases to be delivered, Punggol and Bukit Panjang residents can soon pick up their parcels from 75 lockers dotting their estates instead.

Regardless of which logistics firm is handling the delivery, customers’ parcels can be deposited in these lockers, which will be installed either at housing blocks or train stations so customers can pick up parcels to and from work. A notification will be sent to the customer to pick up their parcels at their preferred timing, saving logistics companies from making wasted trips when no one is home — data from industry players show that more than one in 10 deliveries are unsuccessful because of this reason.

The two towns will be the first to get these lockers by the middle of next year and tested for six to 12 months. A request for proposals on the lockers will be called by the end of this year.

If the idea takes off, a total of about 750 of these lockers will blanket residential areas islandwide, such that every consumer will have a collection point within 250m.

The idea for this network in residential areas was first revealed by Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam in April last year, as he noted the inefficiencies and unnecessary costs incurred from return trips in the logistics sector.

Currently, SingPost already operates a similar self-collection system called POPstation, though only for parcels mailed through them. These lockers are in more than 150 locations around Singapore, including community centres and shopping malls.

Similarly, Ninja Van also operates Ninja Boxes for parcels it handles.

The rollout of this parcel locker network is part of plans to digitalise the logistics sector announced by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) on Wednesday (Nov 1). Similar Industry Digital Plans are expected to be rolled out for sectors that are slow in going digital to overcome operational challenges, such as an upcoming one for the retail industry.

Besides streamlining deliveries to consumers, there are also blueprints to improve deliveries across the supply chain.

One idea is for an offsite consolidation centre where goods can be sorted according to destinations so as to minimise situations where multiple trucks from different companies converge at a, say, shopping mall. With the centre, half-empty trucks can make a stopover at a consolidation centre and pick up other goods heading to the same destination.

This idea, similarly, was unveiled by Mr Shanmugaratnam in 2015. At that time, he said it would cut the number of delivery trucks on the road by a quarter and also reduce manpower required for deliveries by about 40 per cent. There were then about 4,000 trucks, running more than 20,000 delivery trips daily.

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