Australia Post has increased its half year revenue by four per cent to $3.8 billion but letter revenue continues to drag with the postal service noting a $87 million loss, or nine per cent, in this division.
Australia Post said it has secured $129 million in efficiencies in the half year and has benefited from strong growth in other areas, but said this has not fully compensated the increasing costs of supporting community letter delivery.
For the half year the postal service reported a half year profit before tax of $83 million, up four per cent on the prior corresponding period.
Standard postage prices also increased 10 cents on 1 January 2020 to $1.10 despite a concerted effort against the rise from representatives of the Australian printing industry.
Australia Post chief executive officer and managing director Christine Holgate said the price rise will support the letters business going forward “but after four years of no increases it will not fully compensate the losses” of the service which delivers to every home and business every day whilst volumes falls.
“Australia Post and the services we provide are highly regarded in the community, particularly in rural and regional Australia, where often we are the last remaining service provider with a physical presence,” Holgate said.
“In order to ensure we are able to continue to provide these community services and remain sustainable, the time has come we must transform our delivery network.
“This Christmas was our busiest ever and we delivered over 50 million parcels in December, with over 3.1 million on our biggest day. Over 190 million letters were delivered, 4600 staff hired across the national network and pleasingly during this time complaints to our customer service teams decreased by 14 per cent.
“Ahead of Christmas we also opened the largest parcel processing facility in the Southern Hemisphere in Brisbane and invested in new automation capabilities across a number of our large processing facilities to continue to service our customers.
“During this period of exceptional growth, our entire workforce worked through unprecedented weather conditions across the country with drought and an early start to our bushfire season in November, and we still met all of our service obligations for letters and parcels. The mail continued to make it through to our customers. I am incredibly proud of the critical role our people played in these local communities assisting those in their time of need.
“Although we were lucky to not loose any facilities or Post Offices during the bushfire crisis, many of our employees lost homes and property and faced extreme stress as they were evacuated for their safety. Our Post Offices and posties were able to play an essential role supporting impacted communities including with access to critical funds through our Bank@Post services, providing free mail redirection, mail hold services and accepting over the counter donations for Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, which has raised over $1.4 million to date.”
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