Deutsche Post Global Mail to acquire US mail companies SmartMail and QuikPak
With that merger Deutsche Post Global Mail’s US customers will gain a single source for their domestic as well as cross-border mail services in the world’s largest mail market. The acquisition of the two mail service providers makes Deutsche Post Global Mail a leading partner of the US Postal Service on the American mail market.
Deutsche Post Global Mail USA, a subsidiary of Deutsche Post World Net, today announced it has reached agreements to acquire the US mail service providers SmartMail Services and QuikPak Inc. SmartMail is the leading provider of transport and sorting services for flat mail. QuikPak is the market leader in catalog fulfillment. With this merger, Global Mail will be offering customers in the USA unprecedented mail services within the country as well as throughout the world. While SmartMail and QuikPak are high-performing providers in their respective domestic business segments, Global Mail is the leading service provider for cross-border mail solutions. Complemented by the DHL@home offer (previously Airborne@home) Deutsche Post Global Mail will thus be the first full-service provider for direct mail senders and mail order houses in the USA. DHL@home encompasses services for parcels, press products and bound printed matter in the business-to-consumer area, for which delivery is carried out in cooperation with the US Postal Service.
The new Deutsche Post Global Mail USA comprising Global Mail, SmartMail, QuikPak and the services offered by DHL@home will employ 1,850 people in the USA and will generate revenue of about USD 600 million. With locations in 15 states, it will be the largest private US provider in this sector. The new company extends the already existing business relations with the US Postal Service and the group’s DHL subsidiary in the U.S.
“Our relationship with Global Mail started as a strategic partnership, so it is a very natural next step that we should join forces to better serve our customers,” says James Martell, CEO of SmartMail. “QuikPak has partnered with DHL for several years, leveraging DHL@Home's extensive network of delivery capabilities to enable us to achieve the best in-home delivery of catalogs and mail, “ says Michael A. Berman, CEO of QuikPak. “Our services complement each other perfectly. Together we can bring better services and innovative products to the market.”
An integration management team, led by Klaus Knappik, Chairman of Deutsche Post Global Mail, will finally determine a unified structure of the newly-merged company over the coming months. Bill Boesch, Vice Chairman of Deutsche Post Global Mail USA, James Martell and Michael A. Berman will continue to be responsible for the management of their respective companies during the integration. Financial terms of the acquisition were not made public.
“This merger is a direct response to our customers’ need for one-stop-shop services for domestic and international mailings,“ says Klaus Knappik. “We offer our customers first-rank dispatch services while simultaneously promoting the US Postal Service’s well proven workshare program.”
The workshare program was introduced in 1976 and forms the basis of the cooperation between private companies and the US Postal Service (USPS), whereby access to the USPS network is granted to third parties. The workshare partners do not deliver the items themselves to the addressees, but rather pick them up from the customers and feed them into the respective USPS sorting centers. From there, the items are delivered by USPS carriers to the addressees. SmartMail, Quikpak and Airborne (today DHL) each have been workshare partners with USPS for years.
