Deutsche Post

Deutsche Post AG, operating under the trade name Deutsche Post DHL, is the world's largest logistics group. With its headquarters in Bonn, the corporation has 467,088 employees (FTE 421,270) in more than 220 countries and territories worldwide and generated revenue of € 51.48 billion in 2010. Deutsche Post is the successor to the German mail authority Deutsche Bundespost, which was privatized in 1995. Currently, 30.5% of its shares are held by the state-owned KfW bank, 69.5% are freely floating; 62.0% of which are held by institutional and 7.5% by private investors. Since its privatization, Deutsche Post has significantly expanded its business area through acquisitions. Deutsche Post is listed in the DAX stock market index.

Corporate divisions

Mail

The Mail division delivers approximately 70 million letters in Germany, six days a week and provides services across the entire mail value chain, including production facilities at central hubs, sales offices and production centers on four continents, as well as direct connections to more than 200 countries.

The Mail division inherits most of the traditional mail services formerly offered by the state-owned monopoly, for which it uses the Deutsche Post brand. Its exclusive right to deliver letters under 50 grams in Germany expired on 1 January 2008, following the implementation of European legislation. A number of companies are vying to challenge Deutsche Post's near monopolistic hold on letter deliveries, including Luxembourg-based PIN Group and Dutch-owned TNT Post.^[2] In 2002, Deutsche Post was granted a license to deliver mail in the United Kingdom, breaking Royal Mail's long-standing monopoly.

As of January 2008, the Mail division is subdivided into the following business units^[3]:

• Mail Communication handles domestic mail service as well as international mail from Germany
• Press Services handles domestic distribution of print products (newspapers and magazines).
• Retail Outlets operates domestic retail outlets (post offices), which offer a complete array of letter mail, parcel and Postbank services.
• Dialogue Marketing provides services for direct marketing such as market research and address verification.

• Parcel Germany handles the domestic, non-express parcel service, including the Packstation network. It was changed over to the DHL umbrella brand when it was temporarily assigned to the Express division.
• Global Mail handles international mail and domestic mail in other countries under the DHL umbrella brand.

Deutsche Post offers a service called a Garagenvertrag (literally "garage agreement" in English) to its German customers. The postman can leave packets and parcels in a specified place (such as the garage, or a neighbour's house) if the addressee is not at home to receive them. This on the one hand saves the recipient a trip to the post office to pick up their mail. On the other hand, any item left at the specified place is regarded as “delivered” and hence not covered by Deutsche Post's insurance anymore.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Deutsche Post started an e-mail service called ePost. Today, a verified e-mail hosting service is run under this brand which allows customers to send and receive messages with digital signatures according to the De-Mail law. Beside, Deutsche Post offers a broad variety of new media services related to their core mail business, including a service for printing stamps from the PC and SMS franking (Internetmarke).^[4]

Express

The Express division transports courier, express and parcel shipments all over the world, combining air and ground transport, under the DHL brand.

It is divided into business units along regions:

• Europe
• Asia Pacific
• Americas
• Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Forwarding/Freight

The Forwarding/Freight division carries goods by rail, road, air and sea under the DHL brand.

It consists of two main business units:

• DHL Global Forwarding handles global air and ocean freight.
• DHL Freight runs a groundbased freight network covering Europe, Russia and traffic into the Middle East.

Supply Chain/CIS

The Supply Chain/Corporate Information Solutions provides contract logistics and corporate information solutions tailor-made for customers.

It consists of two main business units:

• DHL Supply Chain provides warehousing and warehouse transport services as well as value-added solutions along the entire supply chain for customers from a wide variety of sectors.
• Corporate Information Solutions handles documents (collection, digitalisation, printing, storage, archival) of all types.

Financial Services

The financial services division operates through its Deutsche Postbank subsidiary, a retail bank network in Germany, which has approximately 14.5 million customers.

Brands

• Deutsche Post: Deutsche Post offers domestic mail services under its traditional name.
• DHL: The DHL brand is used as an umbrella brand for all logistics and parcel services.
• Postbank: The Postbank brand is used by the Financial Services division, which consists primarily of Deutsche Postbank Group.
• Power Packaging: North America's leading supplier of food and beverage contract manufacturing and packaging services to major consumer goods companies. Power Packaging has a long history of managing multiple customer facilities and dedicated facilities within the industry and has proven to be a diverse and innovative growth catalyst to the packaging industry.

Mergers and acquisitions

In 1998, Deutsche Post World Net began to acquire shares in DHL, finally reached majority ownership in 2001, and completed the purchase in 2002. Deutsche Post acquired Airborne Express in August 2003 and integrated it into DHL, which is now known as DHL Express. On 20 September 2005 the company announced that British logistics company Exel had agreed on a £3.7 billion (€5.5 billion) takeover. The combined revenue of the two companies was €50 billion over 2004. In 2006 DHL GlobalMail UK merged with Mercury International.

References

External links

• Official website