La Poste, the French post office, announced yesterday that the price of a stamp to send a letter weighing less than 20g within France will rise to the European average for domestic postage on October 1. At that point, it will cost 54 euro cents (up 1 euro cent on the current rate).
Read MoreFollowing the publication of the PWC study on the “Impact on Universal Ser-vice of the Full Market Accomplishment of the Postal Internal Market in 2009”, the postal operators of Belgium, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Lux-embourg, Poland and Spain, which account for over 50% of the Community population, express their concern about the study outcomes and plead the European Commission for a balanced approach when drawing up future postal legislation
At the beginning of this month of July, the European Commission published a study undertaken at its request by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in order to assess, in each member State, the impact on the universal postal provision of a full liberalisation in 2009.
La Poste France, the French post office, is investing E18m to build a distribution hub for Interlink, an Irish company that is owned by the French operator. The firm aims to fill the void created by the closure last year of An Post’s loss-making SDS parcel-delivery service.
The 70,000-sq-ft sorting facility near Athlone, will double the delivery capacity for Interlink, which expects to generate revenues of E40m this year and make more than 15m drops.
Read MoreThe French postal market has been opened up to competition with the first licence awarded to a private operator. The national postal regulator ARCEP has also fixed a price cap on La Poste letter rates for the next three years.
ARCEP granted Adrexo, a direct mail distribution subsidiary of SPIR Communication (Ouest France group), a licence to provide postal services throughout France (except for Corsica). It is also considering applications from other unnamed companies. Adrexo, with 2005 turnover of some EUR237.5 million, distributes some 7.7 billion free newspapers and printed items a year as well as 25 million addressed items into letter-boxes.
Under the postal regulation law of May 2005, ARCEP is responsible for issuing licences for items of correspondence to La Poste’s competitors. This morning, ARCEP issued the first licence to Adrexo (subsidiary of SPIR, Groupe Ouest France) to offer services in France, at a national level, excluding Corsica. The authorisation regime concerns items of correspondence open to competition, i.e. items of correspondence with a unit weight greater than 50 g or a price greater than EUR 1.325, that is two-and-a-half times the base tariff.
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