This sponsored tweet from Australia Post speaks to the extent of change in the retail side of the challenged business.
Now more than ever in the history of specialty retail we are living in borderless times.
Change is vital to the future of every retail business.
Not only the retail side – http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-36104129 Finland’s postal workers will be cutting lawns on a Tuesday, the quietest day for letters. The state-owned Posti company is offering a weekly grass cutting service..
Steve….postal services are invariably glorious institutions, with a history of achievements and legions of loyal fans. But the decline continues. Much like certain football clubs.
Hope to meet you in Premiership soon.
MUFC fan
Ouch..
All Post Offices the world over are making drastic changes. Canada Post (the closest in demographics to Aus Post) ceases daily door to door delivery of letter mail in three quarters of its network later his year:
https://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/assets/pdf/aboutus/5_en.pdf
Royal Mail is going to scale back staff and delivery frequency as is the USPS.
Aus Post already does flowers(I scratch my had at this one), is likely to have a greatly expanded govt services portfolio in the not too far distant future and I’m fairly certain will see further expansion into what has previously been Newsagency lines.
Interestingly with the stamp price increase AP has jumped back into profitablity in the first quarter of this year and also given a nice dose of profitability to LPOs in the process through linked payment increases.
The problem for postal services around the world is that people aren’t sending normal letter mail as much (so the cost of paying the posties to deliver letters, bills, magazines, postcards etc every day is funded by a decreasing number of stamp purchases).
In terms of Australia Post what I dont get is why they haven’t looked at downsizing the number of post offices they operate (either closing them or turning them into cheaper-to-run “agencies” of some sort that still offer the core postal services but don’t require so much expensive real-estate). Or for that matter, looking at rent costs for post offices across the board and identifying cases where post offices in high rent locations can be moved to nearby locations that may not be so expensive (e.g. moving from a high rent shopping center location to a lower-rent street location)
Australia Post continue to refuse to install Street Posting boxes in new developments because of lack of funds. They are forcing the decrease in regular mail and are promoting their new, improved parcel services.