Zalando, Fnac-Darty and Nespresso have already placed their trust in Colis Privé in France. Colis Privé, a subsidiary of France's leading private postal group Hopps, operates on behalf of nearly 200 customers, including some of the largest French and international e-retailers, and relies on some 3,800 delivery personnel, within a network spread over four hubs and 100 agencies located throughout the country.

On Monday morning, the company, which has made a specialty of delivering within 24 or 48 hours of an order being placed, announced that it is launching its international activities in Belgium, Luxembourg and Morocco.

For the first two countries, deliveries will be made from a logistics centre based in Willebroek near Antwerp. The company of Frédéric Pons, co-chairman of Colis Privé and co-founder of Hopps Group, will rely on a network of subcontractors using a 90% fleet of electric vehicles, creating "the first national delivery network using renewable energy."

It remains to be seen how the French group will compete with Post. The incumbent operator has benefited from the boom in internet shopping: by the end of September, it had already delivered more than 4 million parcels, equivalent to its total 2019 volume, before the holiday season, and 1.3 million parcels the following two months.

This article was originally published on Paperjam in French. It has been translated and edited for Delano.