Polish Post grants rivals InPost access to rural mailboxes
Polish Post has signed an agreement granting access to its delivery network to industry rivals InPost. The move is required by Polish law, as in other European Union Member States, where the designated universal postal service provider is obliged to provide other firms access to certain parts of its delivery network.
The requirement is designed to spur competition in an industry that started out as largely publicly owned and therefore massively dominated by the state-owned incumbent universal service providers.
The Polish Post-InPost agreement grants InPost access to thousands of roadside mailboxes used particularly in rural or isolated communities.
InPost, one of the largest private sector postal operators in Poland, said the agreement with Polish Post marked a “milestone” in their partnership arrangements in Poland, providing its services with access to small towns and villages.
The company said the deal grants InPost access to deliver items to more than 500,000 people, and to more than 115,000 mail boxes that could only accept items delivered by Polish Post staff.
Polish Post said that the deal with InPost was required under the nation’s Postal Law, and that InPost was the eighth postal operator with whom it has agreed to share its infrastructure.
“Sharing these kind of mail boxes can take place on the condition that the postal operator concerned provides an appropriate proposal, so we can conclude an agreement,” Polish Post confirmed in a short statement.
“Until now, Polish Post SA, in addition to this agreement on access to its roadside mailboxes, has signed deals with seven postal operators on access to other parts of its own infrastructure, such as post office boxes and the ability to use postal codes.”
“Milestone”
Sebastian Anioł, the president of InPost, said his company had been working toward this agreement with Polish Post, under the postal regulations liberalising the nation’s postal market, for a while.
“We hope that our cooperation with Polish Post is a milestone in the further development of the postal sector in Poland,” he said.
“The biggest beneficiaries of the agreement will be all Poles who each day receive shipments in roadside mail boxes. We are ready to help Polish Post in all those areas where the state-owned operator generates a loss, because we want to reduce the Polish Post deficit, which must be borne by the Treasury and private operators.”
The difficulty for Polish Post is that its rivals InPost are in the possible position of mounting a credible challenge to the state-owned incumbent for the nation’s contract to run the universal postal service.
The contract is up for grabs in 2016, and while Polish Post would appear to be favorite with its incumbency and established national networks, InPost has been working hard to build up its presence sufficient to qualify for the status.
The company says it now has a network of more than 8,300 customer service points across the country, of which 76% are open on Saturdays, 8% on Sundays.
InPost’s network includes branches, partner-run facilities and self-service parcel locker terminals. By comparison, Polish Post states that it has a network of more than 7,500 post office, branches and partner-run counters. InPost said it handled about 280m postal items in 2014, and has the sorting capacity to handle up to 1.2m packages in a single day.
