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Swedish and Danish postal services to merge

Sweden and Denmark will merge their postal services to create a new company, along with a private investment fund, that will be able to meet new challenges in a changing market, a statement said on Tuesday.

Published: 1 April 2008 13:15 CEST
Swedish and Danish postal services to merge
Image: Posten AB/Post Danmark

Sweden’s Enterprise Ministry and Denmark’s Transport Ministry, together with private equity and investment advisory firm CVC Capital Partners, signed a memorandum of understanding to merge the two services, Swedish service Posten said.

“The rationale is to meet the markets’ increasing challenges through the increased competitiveness of a merged company,” it said, pointing out that a recent European Union decision to deregulate the sector would increase “demand of cross-border distribution solutions.”

Tuesday’s deal opens the way for the creation of a new company counting around 50,000 employees with an annual turnover of some 45 billion Swedish kronor ($7.5 billion).

The Swedish state and its partners within Posten will own 60 percent of the new company, while Denmark and its partners in Post Danmark and CVC will hold a 40 percent share, the Posten statement said. The merger would create synergies within the IT, administration and shared services that should save the new company an estimated 1 billion kronor.

“We operate in a market exposed to rapid change. The competition from international players increases when postal markets are deregulated and electronic communication challenges traditional mail operations,” said Posten chief executive Erik Olsson, who was set to take the helm of the new company.

“A combined company with strongly rooted national operations creates the foundation for increased competitive strength across all business divisions,” he added in the Posten statement.

Fritz H. Schur, the current chairman of Post Danmark, was to be appointed chairman of the new group.

The new company will comprise two national entities maintaining the brand names of Posten and Post Danmark, which would adhere to national regulations, Posten said.

Logistics would be handled by a joint entity with its own, as yet undisclosed brand name, while IT, logistics and graphics would be handled jointly under the Staalfors brand name.

The joint corporations would also include a shared service division and would include Post Danmark’s 25-percent share holding in De Post/La Poste of Belgium, it added.

“A Nordic cooperation will secure the post delivery across the country going forward,” Swedish Enterprise Minister Maud Olofsson said in a separate statement.

“The cooperation will help meet increased competition, take new market share and give private customers and companies the international service they demand today. The company will also be of interest to future global partners,” she added.

Sweden’s postal market was deregulated in 1993 but Posten remains the largest mail delivery company and handles some 20 million letters and packages a day, to 4.5 million households and 900,000 companies. It has around 30,000 employees.

The European parliament agreed at the end of January to end all state monopolies in the bloc for letter delivery, effective from January 1, 2011.

Some 11 EU member states will get a two-year grace period.

POST

Can you rely on Sweden’s Postnord to deliver cards and presents on time?

Wednesday marks the last day you can send first class letters or parcels in Sweden and still hope they'll make it in time for Christmas Eve. But how reliable is PostNord, the company which runs Sweden's postal service?

Published: 20 December 2022 15:16 CET
Can you rely on Sweden's Postnord to deliver cards and presents on time?

What can you still send and hope for it to be delivered by Christmas? 

The Christmas deadline for letters and parcels outside of Sweden already passed on December 12th, as has the deadline for ordering anything online and hoping for it to arrive on time, with most e-commerce companies advising customers that anything ordered later than December 19th will not arrive in time. 

But if you’re sending first-class letters, pre-paid parcels, and small packages for delivery through the letterbox, you can still send them up until December 21st. The same goes for other parcel services such as Postnord MyPack Home, PostNord MyPack Home small, PostNord MyPack Collect, and Postpaket parcels.  

And if you’re willing to pay a bit extra, you can send express mail letters, express parcels, and first class ‘varubrev’ small parcels up until December 22nd. 

“Those dates still apply. We have written in a press statement that if you send by those dates you can be pretty sure that they will arrive in time,” Anders Porelius, head of press at PostNord, told The Local on Tuesday. 

But can you trust Postnord to deliver when they say they will? 

Not entirely.

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, Sweden’s postal regulator, ruled on December 8th that the company was failing to meet its regulatory target of delivering 95 percent of all letters within two working days, with 28 million letters delivered late between June and November. 

An investigative documentary by TV4’s Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) programme, was sent pictures showing huge piles of late, undelivered letters in one of PostNord’s terminals, and interviewed postal workers who said that they were unable to complete their deliveries now they had been moved from daily to every other day, as they had twice as many letters to deliver on the days when they worked. 

“You get yelled at by the customers, and rightly so, you get yelled at by your bosses, and you scold yourself because you feel like you’re not able to do enough,” said Emilia Leijon, one postal worker. “We pretty much never manage to deliver a whole satchel. There’s too much post and too little time.” 

What is PostNord doing about the delays? 

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority has given the company until January 30th to carry out an analysis into why it is not managing to meet its targets, and to draw up an action plan of how it is going to improve. 

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