Fresh from being bought for £2.7 billion by Private equity group Apollo Global Management, parcels giant Evri has embarked on a recruitment drive to vastly increase its delivery capacity.

Evri, whose major retail clients include M&S, John Lewis, Etsy and Vinted, currently delivers over half a million parcels a day and it now aims to up that to four million daily, reported Sky News.

So it wants to hire 9,000 new staff in the UK, including more than 8,000 more couriers, plus around 1,000 warehouse and other support staff. It said the extra staff will take its workforce of self-employed couriers to around 28,000,

The company said key locations selected for the new jobs included Scotland, Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, Plymouth in Devon and also Gatwick Airport.
Evri, formerly known as Hermes until a rebrand in 2022, said the number of parcels being delivered is now higher than during the boom in home deliveries during the pandemic.

The company has been hit in recent years by complaints over its level of service, including delayed and missing deliveries.

However, it said it has since invested millions of pounds in improvements and claims 99% of deliveries are now made on time.

Evri’s chief executive Martijn De Lange said: “New client wins and increased parcel volumes are proof of the trust customers have in our service and our biggest-ever recruitment drive promises to deliver another record year.”