Baltic postal operator Omniva experienced significant growth in its parcel and postal businesses in the first quarter of 2018, with year-on-year increases of 18% and 2% respectively.
The greatest growth was exhibited by the Latvian parcel business with 48% and the Lithuanian parcel business with 31%. The group’s commercial revenue decreased by 8% due to the restructuring of the international business and the decrease of other commercial revenues, such as property sales, compared with the same period the previous year.
The total commercial revenue of the group was €24.7m (US$30m) in the first quarter of 2018 versus €27m (US$20.6m) in Q1 2017.
The growth of Omniva’s parcel business is supported by the largest parcel machine network in the Baltics, which has developed into the most preferred channel for sending and receiving parcels for clients. Over 80% of Estonian clients consider the parcel machine as their channel of choice.
In 2018, the company is planning to expand its parcel machine network in the Baltics even further and make parcel machines more easily accessible to clients, even in smaller towns and settlements.
“We consider it essential for the parcel business in our domestic market in the Baltics to show continuous and accelerating growth,” said Joona Saluveer, chairman of the board of Omniva.
Omniva also bucked the trend of incurring continual financial losses from declining mail volumes by recording a 2% increase in postal business revenue in Q1 2018.
“Letter volumes are continuing to decline but revenues from other postal services help compensate it,” explained Saluveer. “The postal business has also helped increase revenues by creating several innovative products which have been well received by clients.”
Omniva issued a pure silver postal stamp for the centenary of the Republic of Estonia, which proved so popular that an additional 10,000 copies were ordered in addition to the initial 30,000 stamps. Omniva also gifted these rare silver stamps to all children who were born in the Republic of Estonia on February 24.
“Products like the silver stamp and the special-shaped Christmas time scented stamps are a good example of how creative thinking can lead to opportunities of innovation even in areas as traditional as the issue of stamps,” added Saluveer.
According to Saluveer, the postal network is continuously being adapted in order to meet the expectations of clients and service volumes. In Q1 2018, the network of mailboxes underwent a major reorganization and were placed in convenient locations by residents, whereas empty and unused mailboxes were removed.
Restructuring of international business
International business, which deals with the transport of international e-commerce parcels all over the world, decreased in comparison with the first quarter of the previous year due to changes in the structure of destination countries. The previously dominating Russian market has decreased, whereas the proportion of other markets has increased.
“This helps to better disperse the risks arising from one dominating market, however, the growth of other markets has not yet fully compensated for the rapid decrease of the Russian market,” said Saluveer.
Post11, the joint undertaking of Omniva and China’s largest private courier company S F Express, serves nearly 100 destination countries throughout the world.
