PostNL to start delivering post within 48 hours, not 24, on July 12

Starting on July 12, PostNL will deliver letters and other mailbox mail within 48 hours, instead of the current 24 hours. According to the postal company, the measure is necessary to keep mail delivery reliable.

PostNL has been struggling under declining mail volumes for years as people switched to digital alternatives. But while revenue from mail declined, the company had to maintain the same number of post deliverers on the same route to ensure 24-hour delivery, as stipulated by law. Last year, the Cabinet agreed to let PostNL extend its delivery times to 48 hours from July 1 this year.

“Even though the volume of letters is decreasing, everyone must be able to continue to rely on mail delivery,” said Maurice Unck, director of Mail NL. “At the same time, we are facing increasingly high costs for a service for which there is less and less demand. With a little more flexibility in delivery times, we can organize the work more efficiently. It's a necessary step to keep quality high and mail affordable.”

From July 12, the job of delivering funeral cards and other priority mail will pass to parcel deliverers, instead of regular postmen. In this way, these items will be delivered within 24 hours, though PostNL is hiking the rates.

The mail company did not say by how much these rates would increase, but Unck told AD that people sending priority post will pay several euros per unit. PostNL is currently negotiating the price with regulator ACM and will announce it in June, Unck told the newspaper.

The move to a 48-hour delivery schedule means that PostNL is adjusting approximately 20,000 rosters and changing nearly a quarter of the delivery routes. “We will speak personally with all 20,000 mail colleagues to discuss what the change means. We expect that there will remain sufficient work for our employees. Locations and working hours may change, however,” Unck said.

From 2027, PostNL will be allowed to take 72 hours to deliver mail covered by the Universal Postal Service (UPS). The company intends to take this step.