Kiwis planning on sending Christmas gifts overseas this year are being urged to send them as soon as possible to avoid potential COVID-19 disruption.
During New Zealand's first lockdown, postal services became overwhelmed with parcels as people moved to online shopping and delivery, since they couldn't buy in-store.
NZ Post had a backlog of at least 150,000 parcels, and courier service Aramex was under fire for long delivery times.
Chief customer officer for NZ Post, Bryan Dobson, said COVID-19 has sparked a surge in online shopping, and it will likely continue through the Christmas period.
"A lot of people started shopping online more and that's continued right up until this point. We are expecting to see more of that as we come into Christmas. We are expecting it to be significantly busier than Christmas last year."
He says NZ Post has been planning for the busy holiday period for "a number of months" to ensure there aren't delays.
"We've put on about 200 extra vans," he said. "We've got over 350 additional people to process parcels, there's over 180 additional flights."
But he says Kiwis planning on sending presents overseas to do so soon, just in case.
"It's been a strange year, and there are still significant disruptions right around the world to distribution systems. Our advice to people is avoid disappointment and just get things sent as early as possible."
