The week that was: 10 February 2012

Rounding up the top stories from Post&Parcel this week, as the industry gathered in Miami for this year’s World Mail & Express Americas event…

Global postal market changing faster than expected

This year’s World Mail and Express Americas conference was held in Miami this week, with more than 200 industry stakeholders from the public and private sector gathering to discuss current and future trends.

Delegates heard how leading postal operators were reacting to rapid changes in consumer and business demand by considering moving into digital services while also building parcel and e-commerce capabilities.

But there was an overarching warning that operators are currently moving too slowly to keep up with changing customer demands and expectations, and as a result risk losing out to competitors.

USPS now dependent on Congress to survive

The US Postal Service revealed that it made a $3.3bn loss during what is traditionally its best quarter of the year, with the losses hiding some “remarkable” growth in areas like package services.

Just ahead of the announcement, Postal Regulatory Commissioner Mark Acton warned that ultimately, the Postal Service is no longer in a position to save itself from its mind-blowing losses: it needs Congress to enact postal reforms, now.

As the USPS board of governors met this week, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe expressed similar sentiments, explaining the situation in clear figures: USPS needs to cut $20bn a year from its operating costs by 2015, but needs Congressional action to achieve $10bn of those annual costs.

Board changes increasingly likely at TNT Express

Demands by shareholders to make changes to TNT Express’ supervisory board, including the appointment of former CEO Alan Jones, were rejected by TNT Express.

The integrator, which has been troubled by poor share performances since it demerged from Dutch postal service PostNL back in May 2011, proposed two of its own board member additions, who were denounced as insufficiently experienced by leading shareholder “activist” Jana Partners.

Board change proposals are expected to be put to a vote at the next Annual General Meeting on 11 April, and Jana confirmed its intention to formally propose changes at the meeting.

And finally…

Is it the future of postal retail? Portugal’s postal service CTT is trying out a fully self-service post office next to its headquarters in Lisbon, with technology provided by US firm Escher Group…