Thailand’s last-mile delivery market facing an oversupply

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Over the last two years, the pandemic has caused a surge in demand for services in some industries. The e-commerce industry, which experienced the most growth during the pandemic, needs to ensure it could meet the demands of its customers. This included ensuring their deliveries are made on time.

As such, many e-Commerce platforms begin outsourcing their services to delivery startups. various vendors have pushed out low-cost, high-quality logistics services domestically and have begun end-to-end domestic delivery. Larger e-commerce platforms had enough funding to even set up their own logistic companies to ensure minimal disruption to their deliveries.

In Thailand, the Thailand post delivered approximately 2.4 billion pieces of parcels in 2020. Overall, there were 3.5 billion parcels delivered. When it comes to online food delivery, there were 27 million users, with Grab leading accounting for 50% of the market share followed by Foodpanda in 2020.

While the pandemic is starting to ease, with restrictions being lifted in some areas, Thailand’s logistics market is still growing rapidly and is expected to increase by US$18.89 billion between 2021 and 2026.

According to Anthony de Ruijter, Senior Associate at Third Bridge, Thailand’s delivery market is made up of two different key focuses. The first one is the instant delivery market. The instant delivery market focuses more on instant consumer needs. This includes food deliveries and such which are normally delivered within 30 minutes to a day.

The second one is the express delivery and B2B delivery market. Compared to the instant delivery market, the express delivery market is focused more on the traditional B2B delivery services. However, the express delivery is more for parcels that are delivered within a day or two while the B2B delivery market takes longer till about a week. This is more in line with economic growth and the spending power of the market. Express delivery is often the bigger market as it has both offline and online services.

Full story: https://techwireasia.com/2022/04/thaila ... versupply/

That may be the case for motocy deliveries for food etc. But there certainly isn't an oversupply for parcel delivery services where there is a clear shortage of drivers often leading to week-long waits for stuff ordered from Bangkok or beyond.