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Denmark’s PostNord close to making profit after lean years

The Danish arm of postal service provider PostNord is still not profitable, but came close to breaking even after a stronger start to 2019.

Published: 17 July 2019 17:14 CEST
Denmark’s PostNord close to making profit after lean years
Photo: Henning Bagger / Ritzau Scanpix

The company, which is jointly Danish and Swedish-owned, was in the black at the end of 2018 but finds itself back in debt after the first half of 2019, results published on Wednesday showed.

But losses are far smaller than the 750 million kroner seen during the corresponding period in 2018.

PostNord lost 81 million kroner in the first six months of this year.

The company’s Danish arm, PostNord Danmark, is still finding it difficult to turn a profit, but has reduced its losses compared to last year.

Operational losses of 750 million kroner were posted in the first half of 2018, compared to 7 million kroner in the same period this year.

PostNord Denmark has lost a little over 50 million kroner overall so far in 2019, once taxes, interest and other costs are taken into account.

“We are almost where we need to be and are relatively far ahead with our plans,” PostNord Denmark CEO Peter Kjær Jensen said.

“We made money in two of the first six months of the year. That’s the bad part of the year. The good months are from August and September onwards,” he said.

The company was formed in 2009 following partial privatization of the national postal service and a merger with its Swedish counterpart through the 1990s and 2000s. It has since struggled, in part due to the dwindling numbers of letters that are now sent. The second quarter of 2019 saw an eight percent decrease in letter deliveries.

“We are now focusing on online shopping. It is packages and online shopping that will move the business forward,” Jensen said.

The company has been forced to let thousands of employees go while cutting deliveries, raising prices and closing virtually all of Denmark’s post offices over the last decade, replacing them with counters in supermarkets and convenience stores.

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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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