Polish Post to invest EUR 120m in new sorting centres
Poczta Polska, the Polish postal operator, is to build new sorting centres in four cities at a cost of PLN (Polish zlotych) 480 million (EUR 122.7 million), according to reports in the Polish media.
The centres, part of a programme to improve infrastructure and the quality of services, are to be constructed in Wroclaw, Katowice, Gdansk and Bydgoszcz, said the Polish News Bulletin. Each of them is to cost PLN 120 million (EUR 30.68 million), the newspaper says.
The post, which recently lost one of its biggest customers, TP (Polish Telecom), to emerging rival Krakow-based InPost and suffered a wave of industrial action, nevertheless recorded a profit of PLN 300 million (EUR 76.7 million) in 2006 on 7% year-on-year revenue growth.
It awarded over 100,000 postal workers pay rises worth a total PLN 60 million (EUR 15.34 million) to resolve a dispute that threatened to blow up into a full-out nationwide strike.
Polish Post’s director general, Zbigniew Niezgoda, is quoted as saying liberalisation of the below-50g, PLN 2.5 billion (EUR 638 million) mail market by 2009 – desired by the European Commission – “should not be a problem”.
Privatisation of Poczta Polska is not expected to take place before 2011, the newspaper reports.
