Belgian postal operator bpost will continue restructuring its activities related to sorting anddistribution of mail and parcels in the next five years as part of its new strategic plan
2011-2015.According to cautious estimations, bpost’s mail volumes will decline by a further 20% up to 2015with costs rising by more than €200 million. “Without counteractive measures, these two phenomenacould have a negative impact of €600 million on the company’s results,” the company explained.
To ensure its financial stability, bpost said it has thoroughly reviewed its logisticalorganisation to adapt it in the most effective way to changes in volumes and cut costs and jobswithout affecting the service quality.
As part of the restructuring, the five current sorting centres in Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi,Gent and Liège will be transformed into Industrial Mail Centres (IMC) and their activities will bestrongly expanded. These five IMCs will ensure regional mail sorting in the order of postmen’sdelivery rounds.
This way, local sorting by address which is currently carried out by postmen in more than 400distribution offices will be limited to parcels, registered items and pensions. The centralisationand automation of activities in the IMCs is in line with the optimisation measures implemented bythe postal operator over the last several years.
The IMCs in Brussels, Charleroi and Ghent will also be in charge of national sorting activities(first stage prior to regional sorting).
Besides mail sorting at regional and national levels, Brussels will also function as a singleparcel sorting centre. “Thanks to the concentration of this activity, we will be able to optimiseour sorting processes and accept customers’ packages later in the evening to distribute them thenext day,” bpost stressed. “This investment will allow bpost to strengthen its presence in thisgrowing market.”
These additional tasks will create new jobs in the IMCs with staff coming mainly from localdelivery offices as sorting activities there will be gradually reduced.
In future, the mail centre in Brussels will have 1,400 employees instead of the current 679,Antwerp and Charleroi IMCs will both employ over 600 staff compared to the current 576 and 387respectively. The mail centre in Ghent will have over 800 employees (currently 446) while thenumber of staff in Liège will increase slightly from the current 343 to 350.
The IMCs will take over the preparatory activities of distribution offices and mail distributionwill also be simplified to a great extent. The 416 existing distribution offices will thus beconsolidated into a new structure consisting of around 60 Mail Centers (MC). The postmen will starttheir delivery rounds from the Mail Centres or hundreds of depots all over Belgium and will thendeliver parcels and mail to the customers’ home. The majority of postmen will be employedfull-time.
To implement this new logistics structure, bpost will invest some €200 million in the threeregions of the country and upgrade its local distribution network, especially through theconstruction of the new Mail Centres.
This reorganisation will take place gradually with the aim to be implemented to a large extentby 2015. The project should be fully completed by 2017.
“The reduction in jobs resulting from increased automation and efficiency will be effectedwithout compulsory redundancies and on the basis of attrition. In addition, special attention willbe paid to the support of staff whose tasks will change or will be adapted,” bpost added.
