Johnny Thijs, CEO of the Belgian postal operator bpost, said the company was ready for theliberalisation of the Belgian postal market on 1 January 2011 but needed to continue changing over
the next few years to compensate for the effects of decreasing mail volumes and increasingcompetition.Bpost has again reached its financial targets and considerably improved quality by makingworking processes more efficient thanks to changes implemented in the last years, he told a mediabriefing.
“bpost is ready for competition thanks to good quality products, a continuously improvingservice and an attractive cost-performance ratio. Bpost employees have done a great job inpreparing the company for developing in the best possible conditions in this very competitiveenvironment,” Thijs commented.
Bpost stated that the liberalisation would result in a loss of its market share while thegeneral tendency of declining mail volumes would continue due to an unavoidable rise in electroniccommunication.
The company’s strategic plan for the 2011-2015 period aims to focus on maintaining the company’sfinancial results and ensuring growth despite a drop in mail volumes. In particular, hybrid mailand document management are considered as new revenue sources in the current electronicenvironment, the company revealed in a presentation.
“After 1 January 2011 and the following years, we must continuously adapt our processes totechnological development, and thereby automate a growing number of activities, especially mail andparcel sorting,” Thijs specified.
Bpost plans to implement various new initiatives to partly compensate for a drop in volumes bydeveloping new products and services that combine the power of a letter with the speed ofelectronic media. In addition, the company will focus on fully using the growth potential of marketsegments such as parcels, document management and direct mail as well as banking and insuranceproducts.
Thijs stressed that the changes will be implemented in social accordance with trade unions, asit had been the case in the last few years. It has already been confirmed in the Collective LabourAgreement that there will be no compulsory redundancies for 2011.
This year bpost expects to limit the mail volume decline to 1% compared to -4% in 2009 whenrevenues fell to €2.25 billion and EBIT amounted to €240 million.
Looking ahead, Thijs underlined the importance of not only cutting costs but also workingtowards growth in the parcel sector thanks to e-commerce while also boosting document managementand financial services.
