Australia Post creates dedicated e-commerce unit
Australia Post, which recently posted a $222m annual loss, has reportedly set up a new business unit dedicated to growing the postal company’s e-commerce business. Although there has been no official statement from Australia Post, local sources have reported that Australia Post CEO Ahmed Fahour announced in a message to staff last week that: “We are increasingly clear that trusted services opportunities within e-commerce, which we have been deliberately and carefully investing in over the past four years, are core to our future business.
“We must focus on the growth of this critical opportunity.”
The CEO also reportedly said that Australia Post must “place dedicated focus on building and delivering solutions that enable governments, financial institutions and major corporates to create and accelerate their own digital futures, so they can easily connect with and provide essential services to their citizens and customers.”
The local sources also reported that Australia Post’s former CIO Andrew Walduck has been appointed to head up the e-commerce unit. While there has been no official statement about this appointment from Australia Post, Waldruck’s profile on LinkedIn does show that he became Executive General Manager (EGM) of the “Trusted Services” business in July and then took on the role of EGM for the new “Trusted eCommerce Solutions” business this month (October).
When announcing the company’s annual losses on 25 September, Fahour emphasised that Australia Post was looking to new growth areas, such as digitisation, e-commerce and parcel delivery to offset the continuing decline in mail.
