“We would hire 2,000 people immediately,” said Post Director General Georg Pölzl to APA. Swiss Post currently employs more than 19,000 people in domestic business, plus around 5,000 jobs at upstream suppliers.
Working with temporary workers in the logistics centers, for example, “is not wanted,” says Pölzl. “Our share of hauliers, for example in freight transport, is too high. We have adopted a program where we insource this activity, we also invest properly there. But where do you get the drivers from?” You need people of all skill levels. These are semi-skilled jobs in logistics centers, but also technicians, deliverers and IT specialists.
Typically, very large companies like the Post are rather capital-intensive, explained the economist Christian Helmenstein. His Economica Institute has calculated the economic effects of Austrian Post. However, the Post is still an above-average employment-intensive company with an employment multiplier of 1.4. “That means: For every ten jobs directly at Swiss Post, there are four more jobs in Swiss Post’s value-added network.” That’s not a very high value, “it’s obviously part of the corporate strategy and the efforts to do as many things as possible yourself if you can do them yourself”. Every 173rd job in Austria is based on Swiss Post’s domestic business.
More than 29,000 people directly employed
In total, more than 29,000 people are directly employed at Swiss Post in Germany and abroad, with the focus not only on Austria and Germany but also on the parcel sector in Southeastern and Eastern Europe (Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Bulgaria). as well as Turkey. “This footprint is also marked somewhere by opportunities. If you want to buy a house, it has to be available,” said Pölzl. They would not be averse to further acquisitions, but they are neither willing nor able to pay the prices that have been paid internationally. “For example, we’ve seen EBIT multiples of over 10. We’re not paying for that.” DHL could afford to write off billions afterwards. “Strategically, that was still the right thing. Only if the Austrian Post had done that, we would be dead today.”
Swiss Post has annual sales of around 2.5 billion euros, about half of which comes from letters and the other half from parcels. 20 percent of sales come from the international parcel business. “It’s essentially Turkey and south-eastern Europe,” explained Pölzl. Austria is supplied nationwide with letters and parcels, but also with financial services and telecommunications services. In Vienna, for example, branches and pick-up stations are positioned in a grid of 500 to 700 meters. “We want to increase the density even more, but we can only do that with self-service stations.” In the future there will be a significantly higher proportion of direct deliveries to such stations.
Delivery of the climate bonus has brought Post “to the limits of our possibilities”
The delivery of the climate bonus brought Swiss Post “to the limits of our possibilities because 1.3 million pieces of mail were sent in a very short time. 70 percent of these were deposited, but we also paid out these vouchers straight away.” Swiss Post also played an important role in vaccination and mask logistics during the pandemic.
According to Pölzl, the aim is to remain the market leader in letters and parcels in Austria, but also to grow in regionally and thematically related markets, for example with e-commerce services.
In recent years, the Post has invested heavily in the expansion of its logistics centers, with some of the money coming from foreign business. “Our foreign business is cash-positive,” says Pölzl, “we have decent returns from foreign business to Austria.” A lot is also being invested in Turkey, “but Turkey finances itself from its own business”. The sorting capacity of the logistics centers was still around 50,000 packages per hour in 2018 – by the end of 2023 140,000 packages per hour will be managed. “Right now we’re somewhere around 120,000.” The logistics center in Vienna-Inzersdorf is to be expanded by the end of 2023, which will then be the largest Austrian Post logistics center with a sorting capacity of 25,000 to 30,000 parcels per hour.
In Austria, the Post generates an annual added value of 1.924 billion euros, according to Economica boss Helmenstein. Of this, 1.34 billion euros come directly from Swiss Post, 385 million euros in added value are created in other companies that provide preliminary services, and almost 200 million euros are generated by the consumption of wages and salaries. “Every 187th euro that is generated in Austria can be traced back to the domestic business of the post office,” explained Helmenstein.
He also calculated the fiscal footprint for Swiss Post, i.e. the taxes and duties. “The added value of just over 1.9 billion euros in the Swiss Post ecosystem is transformed into an additional fiscal effect of 838 million euros.” That is about twice the NoVA and more than the income from the property tax, according to Helmenstein.
Source: Nachrichten
