The 2024 festive season is set to be the busiest ever in the UK for parcel deliveries, with 1.29 billion of them set to land on doorsteps in the lead up to Christmas.
New research – commissioned by FedEx and conducted by Effigy Consulting – predicts a 10.9% increase in deliveries from last year.
That’s up by 100 million parcels on the Christmas run-up in 2023, and bigger than pre-pandemic. It also makes the UK the parcel delivery capital of Europe, edging out Germany (1.08bn deliveries) and well ahead of France in third place (524m).
The study also forecasts that there will be approximately as many deliveries this festive season in the UK as there will be in France, Spain and Italy combined and they will account for over a fifth (21%) of all European deliveries.
UK parcel deliveries this festive season will be enough to fill the entire structure of Wembley Arena seven times over.
Table one: Peak deliveries by key European countries
| Country | 2024 Peak | 2023 Peak | Percentage change |
| United Kingdom | 1,296,064,523 | 1,169,010,583 | +10.9% |
| Republic of Ireland | 45,020,794 | 41,744,842 | +7.8% |
| Germany | 1,085,103,925 | 1,030,477,633 | +5.3% |
| France | 524,737,091 | 500,612,692 | +4.8% |
| Poland | 456,083,267 | 399,335,959 | +14.2% |
| Spain | 417,263,891 | 376,607,578 | +10.8% |
| Italy | 365,072,858 | 337,516,289 | +8.2% |
| Netherlands | 226,550,720 | 210,323,032 | +7.7% |
| BeLux | 109,932,420 | 102,139,359 | +7.6% |
| Rest of EU | 1,697,812,883 | 1,539,705,212 | +10.3% |
