France’s La Poste aims to grow its international express and parcels business, build up newmailstream flows and offer new services under a five-year strategic plan unveiled yesterday, French
media reported. The group is also apparently interested in troubled German mail operator PIN Group.As part of the 2008-2012 plan “Performance and Confidence”, La Poste aims to increase itsturnover by 2% a year on average and reach revenues of EUR 23.2 billion by 2012, reported LesEchos. It is targeting an operating profit of about EUR 2 billion and a profit margin of 8.5% in2012.
Growth would be driven by the parcels and express business, which expects average annualgrowth of more than 5%, and by La Banque Postale. But most investment will go into the mailbusiness which is mid-way through a major modernisation programme, the newspaper wrote.
La Tribune cited La Poste president Jean-Paul Bailly as saying that La Poste was increasingly“a service group” in which each division should focus on what it can do best. He was notquestioning the postal group’s public service obligations, including the universal mail service andthe loss-making newspaper distribution, but wanted their financing transparent and clarified, thenewspaper said.
The AFP news agency cited Bailly as saying that the parcels and express market would be “muchmore of a driver in terms of development and growth”. Marc-André Feffer, strategy director, pointedout that e-commerce would generate parcels growth.
Paul-Marie Chavanne, head of parcels and express unit GeoPost, said the group, which wasnumber two in Europe, wanted to become a “global player”, AFP reported. La Poste had last yearsealed an important alliance with Air France-KLM to transport parcels in the airline’s fleet, henoted. In future, La Poste would invest in “domestic networks outside Europe”, and had recentlyacquired companies in Russia, South Africa, the USA and set up businesses in China and the MiddleEast. India and South America were also on the map.
Meanwhile, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported that La Poste was interested in acquiringparts of the financially stricken postal operator PIN Group. “We are naturally looking at them,”Bailly was cited as saying. Raymond Redding, head of the mail division, said parts of PINcould survive and were of interest. “Acquisition opportunities in the mail business are very rare,”he noted. Handelsblatt wrote that La Poste might seek an acquisition in cooperation with a partnerto get around the problem that the French market is not yet fully liberalised.
