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Parcel popularity gives Danish post service record result

An increase in online shopping during the coronavirus pandemic was a key factor as the Postnord postal service recorded its best-ever annual result in 2020.

Published: 2 February 2021 11:21 CET

Parcel popularity gives Danish post service record result

Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

The Danish-Swedish company has posted its best profit since 2009, the year it was formed through the merger of Post Danmark and Posten AB.

The company published its annual results on Tuesday, revealing the record year.

Earnings of just under 1.3 billion kroner were brought in by the company in 2020, dwarfing the 200 million kroner profit in 2019.

Company director Annemarie Gardshol cited a number of reasons for the impressive return in written comments to news wire Ritzau.

“Naturally, a large demand for parcels has contributed,” Gardshol said.

“But at the same time, we have also had a very high productivity level and good progress in our internal improvement programmes,” she added.

The overall 2020 turnover for the company is 28.6 billion kroner, an increase of one percent compared to 2019.

The Danish component of the turnover amounted to 6.9 billion kroner, around one quarter of the overall amount. Both turnover and profit increased within the Danish arm of Postnord.

READ ALSO: Could Denmark split with Sweden over PostNord postal service? (2019)

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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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