The merger strengthens Posti's early-morning delivery's opportunity for supporting the lifecycle of newspapers and early-morning delivery in the coming years and developing the operations together with publishing houses.

Posti's internal change will not cause dismissals or changes to newspaper subscribers or other mail recipients.

Early-morning delivery is an important part of newspapers' service - people want to receive the newspaper at home during early morning hours. Publishing houses expect high-quality service from Posti, but the early-morning delivery costs cannot become an obstacle for subscribing to a newspaper, even though the number of newspapers is decreasing in the digital era.

"This change we are carrying out will help us contain our customers' cost pressure and extend the lifecycle of newspapers. For newspaper subscribers, it's good that we can, for our part, affect subscriber prices without compromising the service," says Risto Savikko, Posti's Director responsible for press services.

It will also be easier than before for media companies and publishers to monitor and control the cost development of business as the operations will become extremely transparent.

"Competitive operations ensure high-quality early-morning delivery also in the future and secure jobs in Posti," emphasizes Savikko.

Posti Palvelut Oy is a subsidiary of Posti that will employ on 1 July a total of 2,700 professionals of early-morning delivery. The company was established when Posti's early-morning delivery expanded to Southeast Finland.

"We aim at implementing the TEAM collective agreement in November for all our early-morning delivery personnel. The agreement is the industry standard in early-morning delivery. It enables the development of operations better than before together with our newspaper customers," says Risto Savikko.

Posti's objective is to make Posti Palvelut Oy a vital player that operates on a national level. Posti aims at creating long-term competitiveness so that it can expand its service offering and geographical coverage and provide attractive early-morning delivery jobs for as many professionals as possible.

Facts About Early-Morning Delivery:

• The publisher decides what kind of a delivery service it purchases for newspaper deliveries. According to the publishing house's decision, Posti delivers the newspapers either as early-morning delivery or as basic delivery, together with the day mail.
• Early-morning delivery primarily takes place in urban areas.
• Newspaper deliveries are based on commercial agreements, the Postal Act doesn't regulate them.
• The delivery of letters and publications will still remain at the core of Posti's strategy.
• Four out of five publicly listed newspaper publishers use Posti's early-morning delivery.
• Posti currently uses two early-morning delivery collective agreements (TEAM and PAU) whereas more than 90% of newspaper publishers use the TEAM collective agreement in early-morning delivery. Posti's objective is to have all its early-morning delivery personnel under the same collective agreement.

Source: Posti Group