Israel Postal Service officials report 2016 was a record-breaker regarding the number of parcels that arrived from abroad, 52 million weighing in at 8,100 tons. This, officials explain, amounts to a parcel after 1.5 seconds, representing a 30% increase from 2015. There has been a 170% increase in the past decade and more and more purchases are being made on the internet from suppliers abroad, with China playing a major role in this picture. The city receiving the most packages (in proportion to population) was Rishon L’Tzion, with 390,000 followed by Ramat Gan with 243,684 or 1.59 parcels per city resident. Petach Tikvah is in third place with 361,095 (1.56 per resident) and fourth place goes to Givatayim with 80,412 (1.55 per resident). Then come Tel Aviv, Modi’in, Jerusalem, Bnei Brak with the latter surprising many. Postal officials report 300 tons of parcels arrived from November 27, 2016 to December 3, 2016. The postal service dealt with 6.5 million parcels in November and two million were delivered in the last week of the month – a record breaker for deliveries in a week.

YWN-ISRAEL recently published an article addressing Israeli shopping habits and the internet, reporting 74% of Israeli shop on the internet and according to all estimates, that number will continue to grow.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)