IPC: e-commerce continues to offer great potential to postal operators, even if at a slower pace
Over 80 high-level representatives from up to 30 posts worldwide, including more than 20 CEOs met in Vienna for the IPC 2022 Annual Conference on 24-25 May, after a two-year pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hosted by Österreichische Post, the theme of this year’s IPC Annual Conference was “Postal Innovation for the future of e-commerce”.
Holger Winklbauer, CEO of IPC said: “E-commerce throughout the pandemic has been described as giving new oxygen to the postal sector. Today we find ourselves in a world which is very different to the world of our last conference. The war in the Ukraine has resulted in increases in energy prices and costs around the world have gone up. Despite all of this, e-commerce continues to offer great potential to all postal operators, even if at a slower pace. Posts have advantages but innovation is key for them to meet the needs of customers.”
The boom in e-commerce driven by the Covid-19 pandemic has enabled global e-retailers’ sufficient volumes to provide their own delivery solutions and e-commerce platforms to offer delivery chain solutions to SMEs. The IPC Annual Conference looked at how posts should innovate to meet competition from global e-retailers, platforms, integrators and digital native start-ups.
The Annual Conference featured four keynote speakers who shared their thoughts on the rapidly changing needs and expectations from customers for e-commerce delivery, including: Andreas Marschner, Vice President Amazon Transportation Services Europe; Benoit Robinot-Bertrand Director of EU Transportation Amazon; Dennis Li, General Manager of Eastern and Northern Europe at Cainiao Network; and Malte Hans, Associate Partner, McKinsey & Company.
During the IPC Annual Shareholders meeting which took place prior to the Annual Conference, IPC members unanimously approved a new member to IPC. Omniva (Estonia) will become IPC’s 26th member as of July 2022. A key player in the Baltics region, Omniva provides domestic and international postal and logistic services, with over 80% of its revenue driven from e-commerce. Omniva has been an active player in many IPC services and has been using INTERCONNECT since its launch.
Mart Mägi, CEO of Omniva said: “For us, IPC represents the values of excellence, innovation and teamwork which for us as a small innovative country are very important. I believe Omniva can contribute a lot to IPC, but we also have a lot to benefit from the cooperation with the other posts through IPC”.
