Table of Contents
Peter MacDonald
Denmark’s national postal service announced it will cease letter deliveries and remove post boxes across the country, framing this as an inevitable consequence of the ‘digital age’. Falling letter volumes, digital communication and efficiency are the justifications. Denmark is not an outlier: it is simply further along a path New Zealand Post has been on since around 2010.
I worked as a frontline postie at NZ Post from 1999 until 2015, when I took voluntary redundancy after recognising where NZ Post was heading. During those years, I worked under one of the last remaining for-public-good institutions in New Zealand – a model NZ Post was never designed to abandon, because it was never designed to be a profit-maximising enterprise in the first place.
NZ Post Was Never Meant to Be “For Profit”
NZ Post’s roots stretch back to Governor William Hobson. He recognised that communication was critical to uniting a new nation spread across islands and rugged terrain. The postal system was established as a universal public service, tasked with connecting settlements, facilitating government correspondence, and linking Māori and European communities for nation building.
Over the decades, leaders such as prime ministers Julius Vogel, Sir Joseph Ward and postmasters general developed and refined the service, ensuring it reached every city, town and rural community. NZ Post provided an infrastructure that knitted together communities, supported commerce and underpinned governance in a young, emerging nation. Its design and ethos were always oriented toward public service first, rather than profit.
NZ Post’s systems and operations became a model for other countries. Countries such as Canada, Japan, Australia, South Africa and others sought NZ Post’s advice on structuring postal networks and designing efficient delivery systems. A particularly striking example occurred when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited in 2002 and was reportedly so enamoured with NZ Post’s street receiver box design that he took one back to Japan with him as a model.
When NZ Post started the big change
In 1999 the organisation had already begun its shift toward a corporatised for-profit model. From the 1984 neoliberal reset, NZ Post returned around $14 million in profit to the government, generated from stamp sales, retail services, postal charges and banking fees. This marked the early stage of a long-term strategy to balance public service with profitability.
Over the following decade, these profits grew substantially. By 2011 NZ Post was returning approximately $121 million annually to the government. Rather than reinvesting in frontline services or community-oriented postal operations, these profits were directed toward further corporatisation, redesigning vehicle liveries and building vehicle fleets: Paxsters imported from Scandinavia, at $10,000 each, and investing in electric delivery bikes.
Ironically, this fleet modernisation came at the expense of practicality in New Zealand’s unique environment. The humble NZ-made postie bicycle, which during my time cost only $700, could not be entirely replaced. In hilly cities, walking posties and the traditional bikes remain essential. The Paxsters require significant maintenance, so bicycles continue to serve as backup systems to ensure reliable delivery. This underscores the tension between NZ Post’s push toward a modern, logistics model and the realities of New Zealand’s geography.
The Strategic Reset, Around 2010
This model did not collapse. It was deliberately dismantled. Around 2010 NZ Post hired a new chief executive with a clear mandate to reset the organisation away from its public-good service model and toward a fully commercial, for-profit structure. At that time, NZ Post still employed approximately 2,500 frontline posties nationwide.
The leadership change was not about incremental adaptation. It marked the beginning of a structural transformation in which the traditional postie role was made redundant by design.
From that point onward, decisions were driven by commercial metrics rather than service. The long-term objective became clear to some, but not to all: the systematic elimination of the postie workforce, replaced by a parcel-centric, courier-style operation.
What followed was not a sudden collapse in mail volumes, but a managed decline. First came the removal of thousands of public post boxes, particularly in Auckland. This disproportionately affected suburban communities and the elderly, for whom letter writing was, and remains, a cultural norm. Making letters harder to post inevitably reduced volumes.
Next came reduced delivery frequency. Households were cut to three delivery days per week. Again, this was framed as a response to falling volumes, but it also caused further decline. Yet even then, Kiwis continued to use the mail. The ‘cliff-edge collapse’ of mail volumes NZ Post predicted never fully materialised.
Now NZ Post has announced plans to phase out frontline posties entirely, following the same trajectory Denmark has now completed. Letters may technically still exist, but only at exorbitant courier-style prices, while the organisation pivots to parcels and registered mail – the profitable segments. In reality, mail volumes did not collapse naturally: rather, a system was deliberately implemented to discourage letter use.
The long term objective mirrors the DHL/Deutsche Post model
This aligns with a broader international strategy, gearing national postal services for eventual sale or integration into global courier networks, closely following the German model. NZ Post has been transformed from a community-focused public service into a corporatised, logistics operation – prioritising efficiency, infrastructure, and global branding. Even as mail volumes remain, the organisation now actively targets the elimination of frontline posties. In short, NZ Post is shifting from a public-good institution to a globalised, profit-driven logistics enterprise, eroding the social, cultural, and human values that once made the service uniquely Kiwi.
