Canada Post making money again, but delivery to the door? Still doomed

They have barely started making us walk to community mailboxes at the end of our streets instead of getting our magazines home delivered, and already Canada Post is making money again. In a release it said that it made a profit before tax in the 2nd quarter of $53 million, compared with a loss of $104 million in the same quarter of 2013.

The results were primarily due to the impact of lower employee benefit costs, continued growth in the parcels business and new pricing measures for transaction mail [what the post office calls letters, bills and statements] contained in the Corporation’s Five-point Action Plan. 

The number of pieces of mail continued to fall, by 38 million or 2.3 per cent in the 2nd quarter (a total of 117 million pieces or 4.7 per cent in the first half of the year.)

Domestic parcels, the largest part of the parcel category, increased by 10.9 per cent and volumes grew by 2 million pieces or 9.7%. Over all, parcels grew by 11.3 per cent to $353 million compared with the same period last year. 

About a quarter of a million addresses will be moved to community mailboxes in early 2015 and a total of 1.17 million by the end of next year, leaving about one-third of Canadian addresses with door-to-door delivery to be converted in the remainder of the five-year period. 

Related posts:

• Government approves regulations for postal rate increase effective March 31
• Publishers told that Publications Mail rate staying as announced for Jan 2014
• Canada Post announces service changes and price increases for next January