Redmail, a joint venture between TNT Post and Styria Media Group AG, will pull out of the Austrianmail market to focus on the regional delivery of newspapers as part of TNT’s new five-year strategy
“Vision 2015”, it was announced today.TNT said the recently introduced Postal Act, which limits real competition in Austria foraddressed mail, had contributed to this decision. The Postal Act introduces a mandatory licensesystem for postal services with regard to all mail items up to 50g.
Furthermore, access to Austrian mailboxes is difficult. Around 30% of all households havemailboxes that can only be opened with a key and Austrian Post is the only postal operator withthese keys. This makes it impossible for other postal companies to deliver addressed mail to thesehouseholds, the Dutch group said.
TNT said the refocus of Redmail’s activities is in line with its strategy to manage itsEuropean Mail Networks business (EMN) through partnerships and sale and withdraw from some Europeanmail markets, as announced during the company’s Analyst Meeting on 3 December 2009. In the period2010 – 2015, TNT will focus its mail activities on the business in the Netherlands.
“The efforts to build up the delivery of addressed mail will not continue while thenon-addressed mail business will be limited to the key states of Carinthia and Styria,” said theRedmail managing directors Klaus Schauer and Horst Jungmann.
Schauer confirmed that the new Austrian postal law that will come into force on 1 January2011 is the main reason for the pullout. The Redmail management agrees that no real postal marketcan develop under these conditions in Austria with the negative effects of the global financialcrisis and reduced advertising spending further worsening the situation. “Under these conditions,we cannot justify further considerable costs for investment. Therefore, we will concentrate on ourkey competences in future,” Schauer explained.
Around 50 staff out of more than 200 full-time employees of Redmail will be affected by therestructuring: “We have worked out a social plan for all the colleagues concerned. Our mostimportant goal is to arrange this difficult process in the most social way possible,” the managingdirectors stressed.
Redmail was launched as a 50-50 joint venture between TNT Post and Styria Media Group AG inOctober 2001. Its revenues are not disclosed. Since October 2006, Redmail has been deliveringaddressed and non-addressed mail in Austria, mainly for business clients in the sectors of sales,customer service and marketing.
However, the core part of its business is the delivery of regional newspapers (“KleineZeitung”, “Presse”, “Standard”, “Salzburger Nachrichten” and “Wiener Zeitung”) as well asbrochures.
Founded in 1869, Styria Media Group AG is one of the leading media groups in Austria, Croatiaand Slovenia with some 3,300 employees. In Austria, it publishes 9 daily and 17 weekly newspapers,15 magazines and 15 customer magazines.
