Royal Mail warning of price rises

ROYAL Mail has cautioned over possible further price hikes and revealed plans to ramp up costcutting as it looks to tackle soaring inflation pressures.

The group said it was facing “significant headwinds” from higher wage demands, surging energy and fuel costs.

It said it will need to go further with cost savings, increasing its target to more than £350m from around £290m previously.

Royal Mail insisted it was not planning further job losses to meet the new target, having in January announced about 700 management jobs would go as part of already announced costcutting aims.

It said it was keeping prices under review to combat rising inflation, which comes after it hiked the cost of posting letters by an average of around 7%, and parcel prices by an average of about 4%, on top of a fuel surcharge. The firm reported an 8% rise in underlying operating profits to £758m for the year to the end of March.