Rural communities appeal to Government to stop NZ Post price hike

Rural communities and businesses are in shock after New Zealand Post announced the postal service company is hiking its postage price from July 1.

The cost of sending mail will have increased 100 per cent for those who wrote an open letter about the issue in the last five years if New Zealand Post's proposed 30 percent postal fee hike for bulk mail clients is approved

Rural Women executive Gabrielle O’Brien told Breakfast her association and 12 others have appealed to MPs about the deed of understanding that exists between the Government and state-owned NZ Post.

“[The deed] is pointing out that putting the price up affects the equity of access and highlighting the difficulties, not just for rural, but elderly and rural communities as well.”

The deed’s purpose is to ensure equal access to the postal network for all individuals, communities and businesses who rely on it.

However, it only sets out requirements for points of access and frequency of delivery, with no mention of price.

In a media release from March this year NZ Post general manager of mail Matt Geor explained the cause and effect of the price increase.

“In 2020 the Government committed to providing $130 million over three years to NZ Post as part of a mail Services Contract to cover projected financial losses from mail.

"This allowed us to continue to provide nationwide coverage for mail delivery at current service levels and with price increases lower than what they otherwise would have needed to be.”

"NZ Post is aware of the increase in online communications over letters and said it is not unique to New Zealand, as mail decline is happening across the world

“Twenty years ago, we delivered over 1 billion mail items annually, which has been rapidly decreasing year on year – at the moment we deliver about 230 million and this is continuing to drop.”

"As a result of this decline, NZ Post have increased to more commercially sustainable prices for mail, increasing by 30 per cent for bulk mail customers and a 30-cent increase when sending standard letters to $2 from July 1.

“That’s going to have an impact on our bottom line and going to mean more money spent on that that we can’t spend on other things,” O’Brien said

NZ Post said there will not be any changes to the mail service such as delivery frequency at this time.

By Mayank Kumar