La Poste will soon deliver parcels by boat in Île-de-France

The company will experiment with river transport in the Paris region. The goal: to save time and reduce its ecological footprint.

Exit cars and vans. Between the parcel reception center in Gennevilliers and Boulogne-Billancourt, La Poste will use a barge in 2026, instead of around twenty trucks and cars, electric, of course, but which contributed to car traffic.

The packages will travel 2.5 hours between the Colissimo site in Gennevilliers and the port of Boulogne, 24 kilometers during which they will be sorted on the barge. They will then be delivered to their recipient by cargo bike. Some 3,000 daily packages will be delivered six days a week. This experiment, fully operational in a year, aims to save time and reduce the group’s ecological footprint. If it is conclusive, La Poste could duplicate the initiative in other cities.

In mid-September, La Poste experimented with transporting parcels by tram in Strasbourg. During off-peak hours, La Poste uses line B of the public transport network. Part of the tram is dedicated to parcels, which travel with a postman. This is also a way to reduce pollution and save time. La Poste is focusing on parcel delivery, particularly in cities, to compensate for the drop in mail. The volume of letters to be delivered has been divided by three in 10 years, from 18 to 6 billion letters per year. Mail delivery now only represents 15% of its turnover, while parcels, boosted by online sales, account for half of the activity.

The diversification of La Poste goes well beyond that, it also delivers meals to homes. By relying on its local network, on its 60,000 postmen throughout France, La Poste works with communities or hospitals, for example. With an aging population, which seeks to stay at home as long as possible, the demand for meal delivery is very strong. In 2023, the group distributed five million meals and the objective is to increase this to 10 million by the end of 2024.