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Enjoying strong profit and growing by 20 per cent annually, Emirates Post has turned its focus on expansion plans abroad.

Abdulla Ibrahim Al Daboos, Vice-Chairman and President of Emirates Post Holding Group and Chairman of Emirates Post, sat down with Emirates Business to discuss the group’s diverse business interests and its plans for the future, including acquiring a fleet of aircraft and starting joint ventures with remittance firms overseas.

Looking beyond traditional domestic mail processing, Al Daboos is working to turn Emirates Post into a successful international brand.

How was Emirates Post’s performance last year and what are your expectations for 2008?

No doubt we have made a lot of progress since 2001 when Emirates Post was established as a commercial entity under the UAE Government. The services we have provided so far have been very helpful to the community. Emirates Post made Dh190 million net profit for the year 2007, and we expect a 20 per cent growth from our national operations. If we acquire international operations, we can expect another 20 per cent growth.

What measures has Emirates Post been taking to prepare to move outside the UAE?

We had to think of expansion to our operations and services beyond the UAE borders. We divided our strategy into three categories: financial, express and logistic services. We have already developed these, but more on the national level, and we can use this as our foundation to go regionally and internationally.

We are re-engineering a lot of the processes currently taking place in the government, semi-government and private sectors by evaluating how they conduct their businesses and interact with their customers and mail management. But we need to work on many issues such as proper management, proper IT infrastructure and liquidity so we can succeed internationally.

Can you elaborate on your international expansion strategy?

We do a lot of money remittance. There are a lot of people who transfer money to countries such as India, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. In the past, we used to have a relationship or an agreement with a company or agent in those countries.

We now intend to acquire a stake in such companies abroad to expand our services. This will apply to cargo and courier services. Instead of being just the sending part, we would like to have a share in the receiving part as well.

We expect this to give us better control over the services and a better share of the revenues on the other side of the business. Meanwhile, we are keeping in mind the continuous improvement of quality. If we are involved in the know how, then we will be sure the service level here and abroad is the same.

The more we expand internationally, the more we control and improve quality in these countries. Also it will mean we will bring the business here as individuals and corporates have more confidence in us. It is a new way of looking at it. This is how we can replicate the success of many of the services we provide here in certain countries where we can operate.

Have you already started acquiring stakes in companies abroad?

Yes, we have already have done this. We have begun due diligence in India, Pakistan and Indonesia – talking to a company that exists there and buying a share in that company. We are working now on Sudan, Jordan and Syria.

As Emirates Post Group, we have a lot of services and several companies beneath us such as: Electronic Data Centre (EDC), which is a document data centre that does printing, mail fulfilment and credit card issuance; Wall Street Exchange; and Emirates Marketing and Promotion.

We are trying to expand wherever we go to improve services that are related to what we do. Look what we have been doing nationally. This is encouraging us to set up joint ventures to expand internationally.

What are the challenges you foresee to your international expansion pl