Australia Post Registers First Profit Hike in 4 Years

Australia Post registered a net profit of $241 million for the year that ended June, up compared to the $90 million net profit for the same period last year.

Australia Post Chief Executive Ahmed Fahour explained the agency's first profit increase in four years to an increase in online shopping which boosted Australia Post's parcel services.

The hike in its parcel services is the result of the agency riding on the online shopping boom instead of resisting technological changes. It is the reason why Australia Post does not need to cut services or reduce staff unlike their counterpart postal services in the U.S., Britain and Canada.

However, Australia Post's traditional letter delivery business continued to decline because of the shift of people to email and text messages to communicate. As a result, mail volume delivered went down to 5.03 billion from 5.14 billion and led to a $91 million loss on that line of business.

To cope with the changing times, Australia Post invested into its parcel business and branched out into financial services by signing agreements with PayPal, eBay, Visa and issuers of travel cards.

Australia Post also launched on Tuesday a new delivery option that provides people the option to collect their parcels, often ordered online, anytime they want through secure parcel lockers available to customers 24 hours a day. Australia Post would also inform them through text of the arrival of their packages.

The service would initially be available at Australia Post's Fyshwick site and offices in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney, but would eventually be expanded to 24 locations in different parts of the country by the end of November.