TNT plans a radical downsizing of its Dutch mail business, with 11,000 job losses, part-timestaff only, widespread outsourcing and deliveries only three days a week, a senior executive said
today. Big postal job cuts are also planned in Italy.The Dutch postal operator will instead focus on managing an “asset-free” mail network largelyoperated through subcontractors, Pieter Kunz, managing director of TNT’s European Mail Networks(EMN) unit, said in a presentation at the European Postal Services conference in Brussels.
TNT believes mail volumes could decline as much as 50% in the next five years and it is now aquestion of managing the downsizing of the mail business, he explained. His comments follow therecently-approved new Collective Labour Agreement under which staff chose moderate pay increases inpreference to job security. TNT Post Netherlands, with some 23,000 employees, had offered todownscale job cuts in return for salary reductions.
“In the Netherlands we will make 11,000 people redundant in the next couple of years. They willbe replaced with part-timers and franchisees,” Kunz said. Mail collection and delivery will beoutsourced, and TNT will become “managers of mail”. “I have a dream of an asset-free mail network,”the long-serving postal executive added.
Over the next 2-3 years, operations would be reorganised into deliveries on three days a week,Kunz said. “If politicians want (deliveries) six days a week, then they will have to finance it. Asa company we will not finance it,” he declared. The Universal Service Obligation “is a kind ofJurassic Park and we should get rid of it”, he added.
TNT will complete the closure of its own post office network at the end of 2011, leaving it withan outsourced retail network operated by partners on a franchise basis, Kunz said. In fact, postalservices are now provided at more retail outlets than in the past, he pointed out.
Outside the Netherlands, TNT will in future focus on addressed mail in only three major Europeanpostal markets: Germany, the UK and Italy, Kunz disclosed. Here, too, it will restructure and seekpartners. In Italy, TNT Post will downsize dramatically by cutting up to 50% of jobs, while inGermany has formed a partnership, he noted. TNT Post Italy has about 2,000 staff, according to itswebsite.
At the same time, TNT sees the B2C parcels market as a growth business, both in the Netherlandsand in other countries, Kunz stressed. The Dutch B2C parcels market, valued at about €500 million,is growing at about 10% thanks to e-commerce.
The company will develop its e-commerce activities by investing in e-retailing and offeringservices such as webshop creation, fulfilment and deliveries. “We will offer a full e-retailsolution for our customers,” he said.
TNT will even consider new business activities outside the traditional postal sector, headded.
