The postal industry worldwide shows renewed growth, benefitting from e-commerce growth and from diversification strategies, as revealed in the IPC Global Postal Industry Report 2024 Key Findings, published today.
Holger Winklbauer, CEO of IPC, states: “Following a decline in 2022, posts’ parcel volumes benefitted from the increase in global e-commerce sales in 2023. The decrease in traditional mail volumes was thus balanced by increased parcel volumes. Cross-border e-commerce, particularly between regions like Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America, has strongly increased, creating demand for parcel deliveries across borders. Parcel volume increase had a positive impact on postal parcel divisions which report an average revenue growth of 2.0% in 2023.”
Average revenue grows by 1.5%
Across posts, average revenue growth was 1.5%, an increase compared to a year earlier when there was no change in average revenue. Only 42% of posts reported an operating profit in 2023, though it is encouraging that the average EBIT margin across posts improved to -0.4%, up from -1.6% in 2022. Cost pressure in the parcel delivery market remains high, in part due to rising fuel prices and labour shortages.
Parcel volume growth recovered but still below pandemic highs
Parcels volume growth recovered in 2023, to reach 6.8%. After declining by 4.4% the prior year, parcel volumes resumed growth in line with e-commerce growth as inflation eased. Parcels & express revenue continued to grow, however, at more moderate rates compared to those seen during the pandemic.
On average, revenue rose 2.0% in 2023. Rapidly rising energy and labour costs had a significant impact on posts’ parcels operations profitability.
Mail volume decline further accelerates while mail revenue shows signs of resilience
Mail volume has been decreasing since 2020 (post-Covid), with a sharp 14.3% drop that year. The decline slowed to 7.2% in 2021 and 6.8% in 2022 but accelerated again to 8.6%
in 2023. Mail revenue, on the contrary, shows signs of resilience. Revenue growth, which had fallen to -4.3% in 2022, improved significantly to -0.1% in 2023.
The share of mail in postal revenue declines further while the share of parcels and express increases
The share of mail in postal industry overall revenue has decreased over the past five year to now reach less than 28% of postal revenue. Parcels and express now account for more than a quarter of the overall postal revenue. Besides mail, the three main sources of industry revenue are parcels and express, financial services and logistics and freight. Over 20% of the postal revenue is derived from cross-border operations.
Estimates indicate a continued growth in 2024
Across the limited subset of posts that published interim reports for 2024, group revenue was up 2% on average, while revenue of mail was up 2% and parcel revenue up 8%. First estimates show that the postal industry worldwide could continue benefiting from e-commerce growth.
