This report provides Transforma Insights’ view on the Smart Lockers market.
Parcel deliveries have grown significantly over the years, and between 2014 and 2022, the volume of deliveries quadrupled. There is an increasing demand from customers for next-day or same-day deliveries which puts businesses under extreme pressure to expedite their last-mile processes. Parcel locker stations are being introduced to tackle last-mile delivery problems, especially in remote areas where daily deliveries are difficult. The growing need for parcel lockers has led to an increase in the need to connect these lockers to monitor them remotely and manage their efficiency.
Lockers are equipped with a variety of communications technologies to ease their usage. Many functions use RFID tags or biometric scanners (such as fingerprint or face recognition). Short Range technologies such as Bluetooth and NFC, and long-range technologies such as LPWA and cellular are used to connect to the cloud. Many lockers can be operated via a smartphone application using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connectivity.
The report provides a detailed definition of the sector, analysis of market development and profiles of the key vendors in the space. It also provides a summary of the current status of adoption and Transforma Insights’ ten-year forecasts for the market. The forecasts include analysis of the number of IoT connections by geography, the technologies used and revenue.
A full set of forecast data, including country-level forecasts, sector breakdowns and public/private network splits, is available through the IoT Forecast tool.
This section of the report first highlights the growing importance of last-mile pickup and deliveries, thereby straining delivery vehicles and human delivery partners (since it is becoming increasingly challenging to individually deliver goods to customers’ locations), which in turn, is favouring the adoption of smart lockers.
This subsection first explains what parcel lockers are and then charts their benefits, like being capable of functioning without delivery operators to separately deliver parcels to each address. It then talks about how a reduction in high street shopping will also boost the usage of parcel lockers but cautions against the deployment of such lockers in low-populated areas.
It then discusses how unlike the US, where the preference for parcel lockers has been low, European nations have been more positive towards this idea. For instance, in Poland and Finland, more than 35% of people preferred this mode of delivery in 2020, a share that’s more than doubled since 2016. It then explains how major operators in Europe have also announced plans to further increase the number of these stations in the coming years. Lastly, in a tabular format, it discusses the present and future deployment plans of major parcel carriers and national postal operators including Deutsche Post DHL, InPost, Posten, Nærboks, PostNord, Posti, DPDgroup/Geopost, Japan Post, and Singapore Post.
This section charts the communication technologies used in parcel stations and talks about some of their benefits and challenges. For example, lockers that function on Bluetooth may have limited battery life, implying that there are additional costs associated with the replacement of these batteries. On the other hand, these battery-powered lockers will save the monetary resources associated with a mains-powered locker.
This section discusses the sustainability benefits of these lockers, such as lower emissions (enabled by reduced travelling to deliver goods) and cost savings. To cite an example, in December 2022, a study by the University of Melbourne found that if all residential buildings with over 100 dwellings were installed with Groundfloor’s smart lockers, courier companies could save around USD8.49 million annually in costs associated with the re-delivery of failed parcels and reduce CO2 emissions by 90,000 tonnes. It also talks about how the high costs associated with the return of online parcels (which can cost businesses 66% of the original item’s price) will also reduce as delivery drivers can collect multiple returns at once from lockers.
It also discusses the monitoring of these lockers to allow operators to keep track of their deliveries. Therefore, many modern lockers incorporate real-time data, which monitors the occupancy status of lockers, and plans and manages deliveries in a particular area, in addition to allowing the operators to get alerts about any possible faults in advance, thereby reducing the overall downtime.
This section of the report charts the reasons hindering the adoption of smart lockers, including their high upfront cost, which may vary between USD15,000 to USD40,000, and the presence of click-and-collect services, in which local shops function as a drop-off and collection point and the shop owners are compensated by operators at a per parcel rate.
This section expounds upon the traditional lockers that have now benefitted from smart technologies and facilitate communication between storage lockers and owners, providing real-time information about locker activity, which not only improves security but also allows operators to better manage locker availability and usage. It then discusses the connectivity technology used in these lockers (like Wi-Fi, RFID, and NFC) and their benefits. For example, RFID and NFC technologies are commonly used in these retrofitted lockers to enable contactless and secure access. It also provides a few examples of relevant IoT deployments in this application, like ACS partnering with KEBA to deploy KePol parcel lockers in Greece.
The key vendors section lists some of the main providers of products and services related to the market such as LockTec, Warehouse in a Box (WIB), Aituo, SwipBox, Parcel Pending by Quadient, QLOCX iBoxen Digital, and KEBA. The report provides profiles of the various vendors including aspects most relevant to this Application Group, such as product offerings, pricing, financial results, and technology.
In the market forecasts section, we provide a summary of the forecasts from the Transforma Insights IoT Forecast Database:
The report charts the growth in the number of connected smart lockers from 1.0 million in 2023 to 6.2 million in 2033.
Transforma Insights forecasts are compiled on a country-by-country basis. This report includes a regional summary, showing splits between Australasia, Greater China, North America, Europe, Japan, Latin America, MENA, Russia & Central Asia, South East Asia, South Korea, India & South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Transforma Insights’ IoT forecasts include splits between the various connectivity technologies as follows: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mMTC, 5G non-mMTC, LPWA (non-mMTC), Satellite, Short Range, and Other.
This section discusses which technologies will be used in the smart lockers application group.
This part of the report discusses the market growth in terms of revenue (module revenue, service wrap revenue, and VAC revenue). Transforma Insights estimates that the revenue in the Application Group will grow at a CAGR of 22%.
