The group adapts its commercial offer to the decline of mail volumes and continues its diversification in packages, services and digital. A strategy that exposes it to criticisms on the future of universal public service and that of the profession of factor.
by Marc Angrand
La Post du Louvre, in the center of Paris, was, for more than a century, the best known in France: open twenty-four hours out of twenty-four, the building of 32,000 square meters was the last Chance of the delayer of the income declaration. Today completely renovated, it hosts a 5-star hotel, a daycare center, shared workspaces, a rooftop bar, as well as a post office, in which the visitor finds many more touch screens than postal workers. And, since 1 er January, not a single red stamp.
The latter, deleted, gives way to the “red e-letter”, halfway between email and sending under fold. A switch that earned the post mockery and protests. In the Senate, the elected communist of Dordogne Marie-Claude Varaillas denounced “one more step towards the disintegration of public service”, while, on Twitter, the secretary general of Renaissance, Stéphane Séjéné, stressed the risk of seeing the Public group modernize “to the detriment [of people] most [old], the most [distant] of computer science or the most [isolated] on the territory”.
To these concerns, La Poste responds with the evolution of uses: 75 million priority folds sent by individuals in 2022, barely three or four red stamps per household and per year, it is fourteen times less than ‘In 2010. A “fairly vertiginous” drop, observes Philippe Dorge, the deputy director general, in charge of the Services-Courrier-Tolis branch. “We are talking about a use that disappears,” he adds. He recalls that the end of the “j + 1” will improve the group’s carbon footprint, removing three air bonds and three hundred trips by road every day.
“in 2030, we plan to treat even more than three billion folds, but it will be half as much as today and three times Less in 2008 “, summarizes Mr. Dorge. Consequence: if the French continue to open their mailbox every day, it may be more and more often empty. This development is already read in the company’s accounts: in the first half of 2022, the turnover of the mail, at 3.6 billion euros, was barely more than 20 % of the group’s total, against 42 % For Geopost, the “package” branch, which brings together among others Chronopost and DPD, and 24 % for the Banque Postale, the Bank and Insurance division. Ten years earlier, the mail generated even more than half of the revenues.
The challenge of the current transfer is therefore to continue the delivery of mail “at an acceptable price”, notes Mr. Dorge, while continuing to ensure the “universal postal service” six days out of seven, imposed on Group by law, but whose losses reached 1.3 billion euros in 2021.
You have 73.92% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.