NZ Post

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NZ Post

Formerly	New Zealand Post
Company type	State-owned enterprise
Industry	Postal service
Predecessor	New Zealand Post Office
Founded	1 April 1987; 37 years ago (1987-04-01)
Headquarters	Wellington , New Zealand
Key people	Carol Campbell (Acting Chair) David Walsh (CEO) Rhonda Richardson (CFO)
Products	Mail service, retail, service centre, banking, air freight, ocean freight, 3PL warehousing, global logistics
Revenue	NZ$912 million (fiscal year ending 30 June 2019)
Operating income	NZ$(21) million (2019)
Net income	NZ$(121) million (2019)
Total assets	NZ$1,631 million (2019)
Total equity	NZ$1,162 million (2019)
Number of employees	4,778 (2019)
Website	nzpost.co.nz
Footnotes / references New Zealand Post Integrated Report 2019 New Zealand Post Group Annual Report 2019

NZ Post (Māori: Tukurau Aotearoa),^[1] shortened from New Zealand Post, is a state-owned enterprise responsible for providing postal service in New Zealand.

The New Zealand Post Office, a government agency, provided postal, banking, and telecommunications services in New Zealand until 1987. By the 1980s, however, economic difficulties made the government reconsider how it delivered postal services. For example, in 1987–1988, the postal division lost NZ$50 million.^[2] In 1985, the Labour Party government under Prime Minister David Lange launched a review, led by New Zealand Motor Corporation CEO Roy Mason and KPMG New Zealand Chairman Michael Morris, to find solutions to the Post Office's problems. In its final report, the team recommended transforming the New Zealand Post Office into three state-owned enterprises. The government in 1986 decided to follow the Mason-Morris review's recommendations, and passed through parliament the State-Owned Enterprises Act, which corporatised several government agencies into state-owned enterprises.^[3][4] The Post Office's corporatisation was then completed with the 1987 passage of the Postal Services Act.^[2][5] The two acts broke up the New Zealand Post Office into three corporations: the postal service firm New Zealand Post Limited, the savings bank Post Office Bank Limited, later rebranded as PostBank, and the telecommunications company Telecom New Zealand Limited. Today, only NZ Post remains a state-owned enterprise, as PostBank and Telecom were privatised in 1989 and 1990, respectively.^[6]

In its first year of operation, New Zealand Post turned the losses of previous years into a NZ$72 million profit.^[7]

A year after the 1987 Post Office Act, the Lange Government declared its plan to fully privatise the post.^[7] To prepare for privatisation, it decided to gradually reduce NZ Post's monopoly. When it was corporatised in 1987, New Zealand Post had a monopoly for mail up to 500 grams and NZ$1.75 value. This was first reduced to $1.35, then $1, and finally 80 cents. The government also let NZ Post downsize by closing a third of its locations. In 1991–1992, another review came out in support of the government's privatisation plan. However, by the end of 1993 the government abandoned its plan because of public opposition.^[2]

New Zealand Post began its life with 1,244 post offices, later rebranded as PostShops, of which 906 were full post offices and 338 were postal agencies. On 5 February 1988, 581 post offices or bank branches were downsized or closed,^[8] after government subsidies expired. As of March 1998, there were 297 PostShops and 705 Post Centres. However, there are now more outlets than before corporatisation, with 2,945 other retailers of postage stamps.^{[citation needed]}

There was a reduction in the "real" price of postage, with a nominal drop of the standard letter postage rate from 45 cents to 40 cents in 1996, and restoration of the 45 cent rate in 2004. Since then the cost has risen to 50 cents in 2007, to 60 cents in 2010, to 70 cents in 2012, to 80 cents in 2014, to $1 in 2016, to $1.20 in 2018, to $1.30 in 2019, to $1.40 in 2020, to $1.50 in 2021, to $1.70 in 2022, to $2.00 in 2023 and $2.30 in 2024, amidst significant declines in mail volumes.^{[citation needed]}