"Exceptional year"

Austrian Post focuses on elections, parcel boom and banking business

Although letter volumes are constantly shrinking, other areas of Swiss Post are growing.

(Bild: APA/HARALD SCHNEIDER)

Georg Pölzl, CEO of Austrian Post, expects this year to be an exceptional year in the mail business. "We had the AK elections, the EU elections, soon to be followed by the National Council and two regional elections. As there are more and more voters using voting cards, we are also benefiting."

The trend of letter volumes shrinking by around five percent every year should therefore have less of an impact this year. In general, however, the former core business is in sharp decline. "When I started at Austrian Post in 2009, we had a good 1.1 billion letters, now it's half that," said Pölzl in an interview with "Krone", who is handing over the top job to fellow board member Walter Oblin at the end of September after 15 years.

In contrast, the parcel segment has quadrupled during this time. "We have grown from 50 million to over 200 million consignments a year, and that will continue. Fortunately, we more than tripled the capacity of our distribution centers early on to 138,000 parcels per hour. Otherwise we would have been knocked off course during corona."

Post General Georg Pölzl

(Bild: Christian Fischer)

An additional challenge is that 80 percent of parcel shipments come to us from abroad. Alongside Ireland, Austria has the largest influx in Europe, "this is due to our large neighbor Germany, which speaks the same language. Five percent of parcels come directly from China, with strong growth." This is why the "Alles Post Deutschland" service is new, which allows shippers who do not deliver to Austria to have their parcels delivered via Germany.

Overall, this has completely changed the postal business: in 2009, the parcel and logistics segment accounted for 13 percent of Group revenue, recently it was 51 percent for the first time, and soon it will be 60 percent, Pölzl expects. Conversely, letters and direct mail items now only account for less than 40 percent instead of the previous 76 percent. The international expansion into south-eastern Europe and Turkey in particular has contributed to this. Our subsidiary there, Aras Kargo, next moved on to Azerbaijan.

We have grown from 50 million to more than 200 million parcel shipments.

Post-Chef Georg Pölzl

In order to remain the clear market leader in Austria, self-service stations are being expanded ("we want to have one every 700 meters in urban areas within 'sleeping distance'"), as well as innovations such as delivery directly to self-service boxes or to the front room, even if you are not at home.

The second growth area will be bank99, the Post CEO expects. "This will be a very important source of income. In Italy, France and Portugal, banks contribute over 50 percent of Swiss Post's profits."

We want to have a self-service station every 700 meters in conurbations within 'sleeping distance'.

Post-Chef Georg Pölzl

The former office is highly profitable anyway. In the previous year, it earned 392 million euros operationally on a turnover of 2.7 billion euros. In addition to the shareholders around the state holding company Öbag (holds 52.8 percent), who have earned well since the IPO in 2006, the employees are also benefiting. They already received 813 euros each as a bonus in the previous year.