Mail price hikes as volumes plunge
New Zealand Post will hike the price of sending a standard letter by 10 cents to $1.30 from July 1.
The state-owned postal service said the price rise applied to personal and bulk business mail in response to the continued decline in the number of items being delivered. The increase follows a 20-cent rise a year ago.
NZ Post mail general manager Matt Geor said New Zealand had one of the highest rates of letter volume decline in the world.
About 400 million items are mailed each year but the growth in online communication continues to drive a drop in the number of personal letters at a ‘‘significant rate,’’ he said.
Only about 1 per cent of all mail is personal, with the majority sent by business.
‘‘We need to make the price change to help cover the cost of delivering letters and to ensure we can sustain the current postal service for those who are using it. However, with an annual decline of approximately 60 million mail items through our network, we also need to increase the price of postage,’’ Geor said.
The cost of sending large letters will increase by 20c to $2.60 and oversize mail will increase by 30c to $3.90.
Bulk mail costs for business will also increase. Zonal pricing will be introduced for certain services as well as changes to weight, thickness and dimensions for bulk mail product sizes.
NZ Post was working to reduce network costs by making ‘‘big changes’’ to the way it operates, Geor said.
In the past few years 55 processing centres had been consolidated into three large ones, and the company had introduced automated processing technology that sorts the mail, he said.
Mail delivery days have also been reduced to three days a week in urban areas and buggies have been introduced for the delivery of letters and small parcels in some areas. These changes have reduced costs by about $70 million a year.
Future changes were likely to focus on making mail processing more efficient, Geor said.