With online sales rising to 30% of all retail sales last year, according to the Office for National Statistics, there are more parcels than ever ending up on people’s front doorsteps.

This has created an opportunity for unscrupulous criminals to steal goods from unsuspecting citizens who may not be home or may be unaware of the delivery.

The BBC’s Watchdog programme recently featured one community which has set up its own Neighbourhood Watch scheme to protect each other from the so-called ‘porch pirates.’

According to the consultancy Retail Economics, one in five people have experienced a stolen parcel. One answer to this trend is the use of postal lockers.

Postal lockers are safety deposit boxes ranging in size from a few inches by 12 inches to a foot and a half squared.

Retail Economics estimates 75% of Gen Z shoppers (those under 25 years of age) have used a postal locker compared with only around a third of baby boomers (those born in the two decades after the second world war)

Postal lockers are springing up all over the UK and can be seen on petrol station forecourts, at supermarkets, railway stations and even the local pub.

By simply scanning a QR or numeric code, items can be collected or dropped off rather than being left outside the front door and presenting a temptation for opportunist thieves.

With around eight million people living in flats and apartments in big cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester, some argue the UK is ripe for a postal locker revolution.

Two Czech billionaires have already spotted the opportunity, and are battling it out for supremacy in this burgeoning market.

BILLIONAIRES BATTLE IT OUT

In the blue corner is the Czech Republic’s once richest man Peter Kellner, who amassed a $17.5 billion fortune before dying in a skiing accident in 2021.

His family investment vehicle PPS Group is the largest shareholder in Polish-based automated parcel machine maker and e-commerce group InPost (INPST:AMS), holding a 28.7% stake.

InPost dominates the UK postal locker market with around 9,000 lockers and the company believes there is potential for around 30,000 lockers in total.

KRETINSKY’S EMPIRE

The former investment bank lawyer has built one of Europe’s largest energy groups, Energeticky a Prumyslovy Holding, and has since been diversifying into retail, media and other sectors.

Vesa manages a portfolio of investments valued at around $3 billion which includes 10% of UK grocer Sainsbury’s (SBRY), 30% of Dutch incumbent postal operator PostNL (PNL:AMS), 10.6% of US sportswear and footwear company Footlocker (FL:NYSE) and 15% of French mail-related solutions group Quadient (QDT:EPA), formerly known as Neopost.

Kretinsky also owns 27% of East London football club West Ham United and Czech football team Sparta Prague through his 1890 Holdings group.

In the red corner is better-known Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, who hit the headlines last year when he successfully made a £3.75 billion bid for Royal Mail owner International Distribution Services (IDS). The acquisition is due to close in the second quarter of 2025.

Kretinsky built up a 27.5% stake in IDS through his investment vehicle Vesa Equity Investment, and according to Forbes his net worth is estimated to be around $10 billion.

The billionaire believes he can turn around IDS’s fortunes by investing heavily in postal boxes and has earmarked £400 million to roll out 20,000 boxes.

The snag is, Kellner’s InPost group has a significant first-mover advantage and in January said it planned to invest a further £600 million in the UK by 2029.

Britain is the company’s fastest growing market, and it expects to increase the number of lockers across the country by 50% this year alone.

In 2024, InPost completed its acquisition of Menzies, giving it full ownership of the entire logistics process in the country.

InPost chief executive Micheal Rouse believes building scale is the key to success, which means the firm must have a bank of lockers within seven minutes’ walk of homes in cities and within a seven-minute drive in rural areas.

The advantage for InPost in building a dense network is that it can deliver in bulk, which means operating fewer vans, bringing down costs while being less damaging to the environment.

Rouse is betting greater scale will allow the business to lower the cost to the customer as well as providing convenience, further driving adoption, although for now InPost is not quite there.

A second-class parcel starts at £3.69 from Royal Mail, compared with £3.42 for InPost, but ultimately Rouse wants to be 30% cheaper than delivering to the door.

The UK business recently turned a profit, demonstrating the success of the strategy. Inpost has long-term relationships with Tesco (TSCO), Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Lidl and Aldi, with Asda the only major grocer not in the company’s fold.

Inpost believes it has another big advantage over Royal Mail, which is it doesn’t have to worry about cannibalisation.

For every customer who switches to lockers, Royal Mail and Amazon (AMZN:NASDAQ) are no better off because they are existing customers who previously used home delivery.

‘I’m not eating my own profit pool, I’m eating theirs,’ explains Rouse. This may be the reason Amazon has pared back locker expansion in the UK, for fear it may deter people from paying for Prime delivery.

Kretinsky appears to be hedging his bets, which may explain why he has stakes in InPost, IDS and Quadient. The French firm recently won a contract to install 1,200 lockers across the pub estate of Punch Taverns and several railway stations served by Northern Rail.

Expanding through Quadient may prove a more effective strategy for Kretinsky than potentially cannibalising his IDS operations. If successful, it may make sense to merge the two businesses to capture more of the value opportunity.

Whichever billionaire eventually wins out, the UK’s landscape will be forever changed by the appearance of postal lockers, much to the chagrin of those pesky porch pirates. 

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