Royal Mail has launched a six-month pilot bringing self-service parcel lockers to a handful of Tesco stores across the UK, in a fresh push by International Distribution Services’ postal arm to widen its out-of-home delivery footprint and take on rivals such as InPost and Amazon in the increasingly crowded click-and-collect locker market.
The 24/7 units, installed outside participating supermarkets, let shoppers collect, send and return parcels at any hour, folding a parcel errand into the weekly shop. The first locations include Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Barrow, Burnham-on-Sea, Bury, Cullompton, Horwich, March, Preston and Salisbury.
The lockers come with built-in label printing, addressing a common gripe for online shoppers who lack a printer at home. Customers pay for postage online and receive a QR code, which can be scanned at the locker to print a shipping label or process a return. Royal Mail said the service complements its existing parcel drop-off and collection network.
The tie-up sits within Tesco’s broader locker strategy rather than displacing it. The Royal Mail lockers will run alongside Tesco’s existing InPost units, giving customers more ways to send, collect and return parcels. Tesco described the trial as part of a wider test of “locker hub” arrangements spanning several providers across a small number of stores.
The move underscores how central out-of-home delivery has become to Royal Mail’s growth strategy as e-commerce returns and collections increasingly bypass the doorstep. Royal Mail now operates 25,000 locations where customers can drop off and collect parcels, including 2,600 lockers. Jack Clarkson, Royal Mail’s managing director for out-of-home and commercial excellence, cast the Tesco partnership as a step toward a much larger target: tripling the company’s parcel points to 45,000 by 2030.
For Tesco, the trial extends a pattern of turning supermarket forecourts into logistics real estate, monetising footfall by hosting third-party services alongside the weekly grocery run. If the pilot proves popular, it points toward a larger rollout — and toward Britain’s supermarket car parks becoming an increasingly contested battleground for parcel delivery.