International liberalisation
In January, a European postal directive was introduced reducing natural monopolies over delivery of all letters and parcels between 100g and 350g.
The British system is seemingly ahead of other countries in that it already has 11 companies vying for competition. EU legislators hope to reach a competitive market by 2007 but state-owned companies such as Deutsche Post have killed off competition by buying up companies like DHL. In the Netherlands, a similar pattern has emerged with the state-owned TPG able to buy up TNT with a war chest of profits.
In the United States, the postal system is not liberalised at all with companies preferring the reliability of a state-run company (United States Postal Company) to cover such a large land area.
France: La Poste Group runs Europe’s second largest postal group, and fourth-ranking worldwide.
With 17,028 outlets (post offices, auxiliary branches and sub-offices) in 11,000 French towns, La Poste controls the most far-reaching and dense local service network in Europe.
Employing over 100,000 mail-delivery personnel, it welcomes more than 3.5 million customers every day.
In 2001, the network generated sales of 2.5 billion (GBP 1.7 million).
America: The United States Postal Service delivers mail to almost 138 million homes, businesses and post-office boxes. About 1.7 million new addresses are added each year. It carries the most mail to more people over the largest geographic area in the world.
The company serves seven million customers daily at one of 38,000 postal retail outlets with an annual operating revenue of dollars 65.8 billion (GBP 42 billion).
Sweden: Fully liberalised in 1993. Sweden Post, the former state monopoly, has a current market share of 94 per cent in the letter market.
Finland: Fully liberalised in 1994. Finland Post has a 100 per cent share of the letter market.
Netherlands: Partially liberalised in 2000. A reserved area for deliveries of up to 100g was kept for the state monopoly TPG. It delivers 100 per cent of sub-100g post and 90 per cent of 100g to 2kg post.
Germany: Partially liberalised in 1998. A reserved area of up to 200g was kept for Deutsche Post, which has a 98 per cent share of the letters market.
Belgium: La Poste (different to France) generates 81 per cent of turnover from national and international deliveries.
