Polish Poczta Polska ready for accession
One of the largest state-owned enterprises, Poczta Polska, is looking for new areas of activity and is ready to operate according to European Union rules.
Accelerated liberalisation of the postal market, higher quality standards and transparent methods for settling costs and revenues from monopoly services. These factors are essential, though not decisive, for the postal business. "We primarily take into account the social and technological changes that have revolutionised our business over the past 15 years," said Dominik Czajewski, director of the strategic management office at Poczta Polska.
The development of the Internet has offered many substitutes for traditional postal services. The social changes linked with Poland's economic transformation, including the frequent changes of work, the need to move in search of work, an increased number of international trips and an increased percentage of people with a higher education, lead to a situation in which the demand for traditional postal services is falling.
Accession to the EU, through accelerated liberalization of the market and the appearance of new players, may accelerate this process. Such a possibility is taken into account by the Poczta Polska strategy under way for two years. It emphasizes the development of new services and expansion onto markets not associated with postal services.
"The first important market that we want to target as an alternative to the traditional postal business are banking and financial services," said Czajewski. "With an extensive network of nationwide distribution and with the obligation to maintain this network-in keeping with EU and national regulations-we also want to offer a full range of banking and financial services." This will be an intermediate service between what is currently offered by cooperative banks and the range of national retail banks.
Assets built during the performance of traditional postal services, a computerized network of post offices and an army of 16,000 mail carriers, will make it possible, in Czajewski's opinion, to offer a fuller and more attractive range of services for customers than that offered by cooperative banks. At the same time, these services will be cheaper than those provided by large retail banks.
No less important is the logistic market. Poczta Polska does not want to compete with large companies, but hopes that its postal service infrastructure (several thousand delivery vehicles, about 60 reloading terminals and 120 warehouses across Poland) will enable the performance of simple logistic services at a lower price.
Electronic services are a third important market. "These will not be advanced solutions such as those offered by telecommunications or Internet companies, but basic services chiefly linked with communication and electronic payments that may keep customers from giving up Poczta Polska's services," says Czajewski. "Many Poles pay their bills at the post office, because our commission is lower than that in banks."
Czajewski says May 1 will see no revolution that would radically change the postal market. However, for 2009, a full liberalization of the market is preliminarily planned, as a result of which a single integrated postal market will emerge and all operators will compete with one another.
In Czajewski's opinion, operational consolidation will take place at that time: large operators such as the Dutch and German postal services will take over smaller money-losing operators in need of restructuring.
Also possible is consolidation for cooperation, similar to that on the passenger air transport market, or the establishment of strategic alliances led by large market players. "For several years, we have conducted talks with the largest postal operators, chiefly with cooperation alliances in mind. We try to look for partners for each of these businesses: postal, financial, logistic and electronic, to work together in the future," says Czajewski.
The Polish national operator is in a difficult situation: it is quickly beginning to lose revenues from corporate clients. At the same time, it lacks money for the development of services for retail clients. This is a specific market. All postal operators must guarantee the delivery of a letter at the same price, regardless of whether the letter is delivered from one district of Warsaw to another, or from Warsaw to a far-off village. Delivery costs are incomparable, and the price of service is the same.
When a foreign operator enters the Polish market they will be able to choose the most lucrative service, for example the delivery of 8 million letters to select customers of Telekomunikacja Polska in large cities, while leaving other shipments to Poczta Polska. "It is a myth to believe that customers will no longer have to stand in lines when the British, German or Dutch postal service comes to Poland," Czajewski said.
