 "E commerce")
A new report from Australia's national postal service on Thursday revealed that in the 2022 financial year a record number of people were shopping online, further evidence of the nation's stark shift to e-commerce during the pandemic.
The report released by Australia Post showed that in the financial year ending on June 30, 2022, a record 9.3 million households had shopped online, representing an increase of 200,000 from the previous year, reports Xinhua news agency.
Meanwhile, online purchases grew by almost 12 per cent.
In each month of the year, an average of 5.6 million households purchased something online, 1.5 million more than before the pandemic, a trend that was especially prevalent in the six months between July and December of 2021 -- when many Australian cities were in pandemic-related lockdowns.
Australia Post Head of eCommerce Data Analytics Rose Yip said the growth in online shopping had accelerated beyond expectations throughout the pandemic.
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"We've seen more than 900 million parcels delivered in the last three years alone, which says so much about how quickly eCommerce has grown in a short amount of time," said Yip.
"It's now the norm for so many Australians."
Australia's most populous state, New South Wales (NSW), saw the most dramatic shift, with e-commerce growing by 27 per cent compared to the previous year -- nationally one in three online purchases were destined for NSW.
According to data from the eCommerce analyst platform, ecommerceDB, Australians' appetite for online orders was dominated by the groceries industry, the nation's two largest supermarket chains frontrunners in annual online sales.
Woolworths is in the midst of constructing a number of fully-automated fulfilment centres as it attempts to keep up with the surging demand for online orders.
Over the past two years alone, Woolworths has seen the demand for online groceries in Western Sydney more than triple, the supermarket chain said in a previous statement.
In its report, Australia Post also announced that the continued growth had prompted new investment into facilities, technology, and vehicles to keep up with the curve.
--IANS
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