TNT has stepped up its postal business in Germany by gaining official approval for the acquisitionof the country’s largest mail consolidator and has bought three smaller regional companies.
TNT Post has been granted approval by the German cartel authorities to take over Germany’smarket leader in mail consolidation, PostCon Deutschland AG. TNT Post also announced it hasexpanded its own delivery network with another three businesses in the German federal states ofBerlin-Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Lower Saxony.
This reinforces TNT Post’s position as the number one challenger in the German market fordelivering addressed mail. In 2006 TNT Post expects its revenues to increase to €200 million. “TNTPost aims to increase its share of the German addressed mail market to about 10% within the nextfive years,” said TNT Post Germany managing director Mario Frusch, “making us the biggestcompetitor for Deutsche Post AG.”
PostCon, which is based in Berlin, pre-sorts 1.3 million items of addressed mail each dayaccording to postcode regions for delivery nationwide. PostCon’s client base currently comprisesabout one thousand German companies, including half the blue-chip companies listed in the DAX indexand other major customers such as Tchibo, Philips, Bosch, and the Merck pharmaceuticals group.
PostCon operates thirteen highly efficient sorting centres throughout Germany and has 300employees. TNT Post has two modern sorting centres in Essen and Frankfurt. According toFrusch, “taking over PostCon means that – after Deutsche Post AG – we now have by far the densestand most up-to-date network of sorting centres in the country, giving us the basis we need forrapid growth once the postal monopoly has been abolished. We now have an infrastructure that willallow us to double the number of items we process.”
TNT Post has also acquired taken majority stakes in two regional postal services providers,Turbo P.O.S.T. (based in Neuruppin, near Berlin) and Trias (Osnabrück), and has taken overRheinland Brief (Viersen, near Mönchengladbach). Turbo P.O.S.T. currently serves about 1,000commercial customers in the Berlin/Brandenburg area, employing 250 people. Trias has some 200employees and covers the whole of the Osnabrück area. By acquiring Rheinland Brief, TNT Post hasrounded off its already dense network in North Rhine-Westphalia, and it now covers almost all ofthe Lower Rhine area. With 80 employees, Rheinland Brief covers large parts of the Viersen districtup to the Dutch border.
According to Frusch more acquisitions and/or joint ventures with strong regional partners areexpected to be announced in the coming months. The expansions increase TNT Post’s coverage ofGermany to more than 90%, bringing it closer to its aim of serving 100% of German households in thecourse of next year.
In Germany, TNT Post focuses on delivering direct advertising to households and on regionaland national delivery of mail. TNT Post sees itself as the number one challenger to Deutsche PostAG in the market for direct advertising. TNT Post is also the number two for mail deliveries.
