"We will continue to improve our network to make our customers successful in their business," says Achim Dünnwald, CEO of DHL Parcel. "To this end, we are investing further in the expansion of our parcel network. In a market characterized by personnel and resource shortages, one of the things we need to ensure is that we always have sufficient personnel and transport capacity. This means significantly higher costs, which is why our price adjustments will be more significant than in previous years."

Prices for bulky goods are also set to increase considerably. The sharp increase in the volume of bulky goods inhibits operational processes and leads to particularly sharp increases in complexity and expenses. "One focus of the price hikes is on bulky and heavy items, which are more complex and expensive for us to work with - a factor that needs to be given even more consideration in the pricing for these products," says Dünnwald.

Even more than before, the company will be making use of individual pricing agreements with customers for shipping volumes during the peak period around Christmas. "We will continue to accept any volume of parcels that our customers consign to us. We will not be applying a general peak-period surcharge for parcels," says Dünnwald. For pricing purposes, variations in customers' parcel volumes will instead be taken into consideration to a greater degree than before. The price adjustments apply for parcel delivery and do not affect the domestic express business in Germany.