Royal Mail must deliver or die, as it faces serious competition for the first time. From tomorrow, the European postal services directive will reduce the part of the postal market that can be reserved to national monopoly operators.
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Carriage charges for Deutsche Post, the German postal service operator, are set to fall in the new year, after its regulator, RegTP, ordered a 7.2 per cent cut for 2003. The move comes hot on the heels of an announcement that DP must repay 850m euros to the country’s government.
Deutsche Post reckons that the carriage price reduction could cost it up to 300m euros per year, between now and the end of its monopoly in 2007.
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German postal company Deutsche Post AG said it set up a new management consulting unit after an internal reorganization. The business consulting unit, which will employ 130 people, combines the mail carrier’s in-house consulting units, market research service, venture capital activities, and publishing services unit. The unit will provide internal consulting services.
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Jordan Post Company (JPC) is set to introduce a host of new products to attract more customers, including receiving payments of utility bills, and handling tax transactions. JPC, which was established earlier in 2002 as a shareholding company to replace the Ministry of Post, will also introduce e-mail services in some centres. JPC will operate as a new entity on January 1 with a capital of JD14 million, with 150 vehicles and 2,300 clerks in 434 post offices.
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Royal Mail faces multi-million-pound fines unless it dramatically improves two business mail services, it emerged yesterday. The industry regulator Postcomm placed an enforcement order on Royal Mail, requiring it to improve the two services by the end of March or face a fine of around pounds 8m.
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A £15 million fund to help keep post offices open in England’s most deprived urban areas, was launched by Regeneration Minister Tony McNulty. Up to £50,000 will be available to sub-postmasters to maintain, modernise and expand their branches, as part of the Government’s long-term drive to regenerate impoverished urban communities. The grant can be spent on new retail facilities, such as bakeries or greengrocers, better security, updated IT equipment, or shop alterations.
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Royal Mail Group has called for greater flexibility to increase postage stamp prices after warning that it may face extra costs of at least Pounds 1bn over the next three years. Postcomm, the postal regulator, has already agreed to a 1p increase in the price of first class and second class stamps from April to help stem Royal Mail’s Pounds 1.1m-a-day losses, as long as average prices are then frozen until 2006. But Royal Mail claims this could be swamped by a potential Pounds 330m black hole in its pension funds and a further Pounds 280m to cover possible rises in interest payments on government loans.
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