Five major European postal operator chiefs meet in Brussels
On the eve of the debate over postal opening, Deutsche Post (Germany), Posten AB (Sweden), Suomen Posti Oyj (Finland), TNT (The Netherlands) and Royal Mail (UK) were joined by Charlie McCreevy, Commissioner for Internal Market & Services, Jürgen Thumann, president of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), and Paul Kleindorfer, Professor at INSEAD and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
The purpose of the gathering was to demonstrate that full market opening must take place in 2009 to allow postal operators to benefit from changes that are shaking the global communications market. It must be seen as an opportunity to restructure organisations for increased operational, service efficiency and customer-orientation. Furthermore, a modern and flexible universal service to the benefit of residential and small business users can be maintained in an open market.
Key points from the presentation:
- Tangible benefits to market opening – innovation, better services
- Peter Bakker, CEO of TNT, said: “We are demonstrating in our home market and abroad that in postal services, external threats are turned into business opportunities, opportunities to create new services by being innovative, to improve efficiency levels and to develop better services that respond to customers’ changing needs.”
- Universal service in a liberalised environment such as Sweden is a positive experience
- Erik Olsson, CEO of Posten AB, said: “In Sweden, our thirteen years experience of a fully liberalised market relying on an innovative retail network that delivers to everyone to our most remote parts of the country, with no state subsidies or compensation fund, is the proof that the universal service is not at risk.”
- Royal Mail moves from loss to profit, while confronting challenges due to its market being opened to competition
- “We now face even greater challenges as we must transform what we do by modernising and increasing our efficiency,” said Royal Mail CEO Adam Crozier. “Competition can act as a spur and help us achieve our very stretching goals – but only if we are allowed to align our prices with our costs, and if we have a fair regulatory regime which allows us the freedom needed to compete in a fully open market.”
- Electronic substitution is a catalyst to innovation in Finland
- Jukka Alho, CEO of Finland Post Corporation, said: “Postal operators need flexibility to meet the changing needs of customers and the impact of new technologies and electronic substitution on our services have been a catalyst for us to improve efficiency and productivity as well as develop a new service portfolio in areas such as e-commerce.”
- After years of preparation, the European postal services market is now ready for full opening
- Klaus Zumwinkel, CEO of the Deutsche Post, said: “We are hopeful that the new directive provides postal operators with the full means to thrive in the fast evolving communications sector. Liberalisation that allows healthy competition is the only way forward. We are ready to embrace it”.