E-commerce drives start-up creation in lockdown

A record number of e-commerce start-ups registered as a business during lockdown.

Some 315,000 companies were registered during the period, a 7% increase on the same period in 2019, and e-commerce start-ups had the highest rates of start-ups among any industry sector.

Royal Mail said the findings mirrored what was happening in its delivery network. In the first five months of the year, it said parcel volumes rose 34% (or 177 million more parcels) while revenue rose 33.1%  year-on-year for the five months ended 31 August 2020.

Nick Landon, Chief Commercial Officer at Royal Mail, said: “It is very promising to see this level of new business creation. The narrative for businesses during and post lockdown is not one purely of survival, but also of resilience, resurgence, and growth.”

Last week Royal Mail revealed it was to deploy fully-automated parcel sorting machines from BÖWE SYSTEC in its Tyneside, Medway, Nottingham and Southampton mail centres.