The Group wants to create a peak by region by 2010

Road by two European directives, the liberalization of the mail in Europe is mid-term. The first text of 1997 set out the main principles and lowered the level of mail open to competition symbolically to 350 grams. The second of 2002 established two new levels of openness: 100 grams in 2003 and 50 grams to January 1, 2006. This recent stage moved, in France, 39 to 46 of post sales out of the monopoly. The final phase should lead to total openness to competition on 1 January 2009. The European Commission must validate this deadline after the findings of the previous steps. The arrival of ten new members in the Union could also lead to a spread in time, opening card.

Orders always expected

"In this sector which employs more than 5 million people in Europe, Brussels must show that the opening of the market is not destructive to jobs and does not call into question the universal service." "Because the liberalization of the post is involved in an at best stagnant unlike, for example, telephony or the gas and electricity market", is a specialist. Some countries have nevertheless outstripped the movement, such as the Spain, the Netherlands, the Germany and Britain since January, although some issues have not been decided. Dutch and Germans want greater relief from the constraints of universal service and a regulator that is not too powerful.

In France, the clarification is not total, nearly a year after the Act, postal regulation passed in May 2005, since 15 of orders are always expected. The most important should be published before the summer should define the scope of the permissions needed to exercise the profession of mail delivery, specify the universal service and resolve the issue of access to the mailbox. He will remain in the Arcep, the French regulator, to live this regulation and to ensure the control. In the European context, France appears to be at a disadvantage compared to other countries. A quarter of its inhabitants are scattered in rural areas where the distribution is not profitable, and another quarter resident in areas where the concentration of 3-4 times higher than in Germany. The distribution is therefore much more quickly profitable. The France appears to be threatened by a skimming of the dense and rich zones where the volume of mail per capita is the most important addition. Believing that "the business of mail is a natural monopoly", Edouard Moulle, Arthur d. Little, an associate director qualifies this vulnerability. "The presence of two actors in a same market necessarily makes the more expensive service only having optimized its organizations." "Two km would be then the 60 to 70 parallel while sharing volumes and therefore turnover", he said However, the ticket of entry in the traditional mail is high as fixed charges are important in this labour trade. Today, small half of stream open competition seems insufficient to be profitable for alternative operators. In the meantime, the major international actors have their weapons to be ready for an offensive after 2009.

For the moment, potential competition is contained to a few peripheral market segments that were never placed under monopoly such as that of the non-addressed folds or the distribution of press or to the international transport of mail liberalized in fact since the mid-1990s. The field observation and the approach of large accounts is also by upstream such as routing and crafts.

Massive investments

The position widely anticipated risks by launching a massive investment programme two years ago, Cape quality mail, which covers the years 2004 to 2010 and 3.4 billion euros of investments over this period, more than doubling the effort over the past years. "The modernization of our industrial processes and in particular the mechanization of sorting will provide the quality expected by our clients at an optimal price." "Control of our costs is essential to cope with the arrival of new competitors on the market," summarizes Marc Pontet, Director of strategy at the direction of mail.

Cape quality mail shall reduce manual operations at each stage of processing of the mail with the aim 90 of it passing by sorting automated in 2010, compared with 70 per cent currently. In the end, more mail can be treated by a number of factors reduced, which will allow to cut the cost of the final link in the distribution. There is no redundancies, the Granddad boom arriving at.

Thus, on 20,000 retirements occurred two years ago in the mail, half of the jobs have been renewed. 3.4 Billion euros of investments of Cape quality customers, 800 million are dedicated to the training and support mobility by clusters of sorting centres.

If this plan had not been hired, the costs, in particular payroll, have continued to increase. Logistics post molt through the transformation of traditional sorting centres in industrial platforms of mail (PIC). The first, the more enormous, seen as a laboratory of this new industry of sorting, was opened end 2004 at Gonesse, in the North of the Paris region, an area of 33,000 m2 with a capacity of 5 million of folds by day. The Group wants to create a peak by region by 2010. The first 14 openings were already announced starting with areas where the most important streams are processed: Lille, Lyon, Paris-Sud, Lorraine, Tours, Poitiers, Toulouse...

Commitment to quality

These platforms from 15,000 to 25,000 m2 will be able to deal with 2-4 million of folds by day and represent each of 30 to 60 million euros of investment, or even 90 million when they integrate centres for the preparation and distribution of sorting of upstream and downstream, equipped with machines more small but capable of sorting mail in the order of distribution of factors. "The quality of our services must be our advantage competitive number one", said Marc Pontet. It will focus first on priority mail, which almost 80 were distributed to J 1 in 2005 the best result of the last 10 years with a goal of 85 in 2007, ambitious view of the size of the French, the largest in Europe, and its population density. "It will focus also on major customers mail for which the position is the only European operator to contractually engage customers on a level of quality with penalties to the key, if the commitment is not required," assures the head.