Hermes Group, parent company of UK parcel carrier Hermes Parcelnet, has seen “significant growth” in turnover for the twelfth year running, which it attributed to the rapidly growing e-commerce sector.

The group’s turnover for 2015 was €2.5bn (£1.9bn) compared to €2.2bn the previous year. This 11% increase, the group said, had been driven by “booming e-commerce”, with the group handling 580 million shipments over the course of 2015.

Hanjo Schneider, chairman of the supervisory board of Hermes Europe, said: "We're happy to be concluding our twelfth year in a row with significant growth, as well as outperforming the competition in relevant markets such as Germany and the UK. We want to build on this in 2016.

“Digital transformation will continue to be the megatrend in our globalised world in the future. This is an exciting opportunity that opens up potentials for growth and clearly shapes our agenda at Hermes," he added.

In the UK, for the year ended 28 February 2015, Hermes saw a 15% rise in turnover to £443m, as well as an 8% pre-tax profit increase to £36m.

Hermes Group said that its growth in the UK had mainly been driven by the Hermes Parcel Shop network and its focus on technology; the company is in the process of spending £18m on new handheld technology for its network.

The UK branch of Hermes has also recently begun work on a 82,000m², £31m, Rugby super hub, which will almost double its current capacity and see parcels shipped from the UK to 191 different countries.

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