THE posting of local and UK letters continued to decline last year, according to Jersey Post’s latest annual report, which also revealed the company reported an £81 million turnover in 2024 – 2% lower than the year before.
This drop in turnover was put down to lower sales in Jersey Post’s global logistics division, but the company highlighted that margins had improved in its “core operations” and it had also moved to reduce administrative costs.
Letters posted in Jersey dropped by 10% while there was a more significant drop of 22% for UK letters in a trend described by Jersey Post Group chief executive Mark Siviter as “clear and irreversible”, in his strategic report.
The chief executive saw his remuneration package increase to £396,000 in 2024 from £377,000 the year before – the 2024 figure included a £271,000 salary and £120,000 bonus, according to the report.
Mr Siviter said: “Jersey Post continues to experience the same structural decline in letter volumes as other industrialised economies as digital media replaces statements, direct mail, and social correspondence, with businesses and government continuing their switch to access via digital platforms. This trend is clear and irreversible.”
The cost of sending a letter locally and to the UK was frozen for two years but price increases took effect in January this year which Jersey Post said were needed to ensure that the postal service remained “viable”. The cost of sending a parcel was reduced at the same time.
Jersey Post was also facing an economic challenge due to changes in the size and structure of Jersey’s population, Mr Siviter said. “Postal volumes generally correlate to the number of potential users, the lack of growth in total population combined with a growing share of older Islanders is contributing to a plateauing of parcel volumes.”
Jersey Post board chairman Kevin Keen said “much time” was spent in 2024 cooperating with the Jersey Financial Services Commission to adjust policies and procedures “to meet their expectations” after the postal entity was found to have made a number of regulatory breaches, including with its bureaux de change services, money transfer and agency banking, over a four-year period.
In a statement issued last year, the JFSC said between January 2019 and December 2022, the Jersey Post board was “unable to demonstrate adequate knowledge of the regulatory requirements” and “over-relied” on its compliance function to ensure everything was compliant – despite that function “not operating effectively”.
Jersey Post ultimately avoided a fine for the breaches.
Mr Keen said while this was a “difficult period” for the company, “much has been learnt, and the business has improved as a result”.
The report also shows the company made a £2.1m loss before taxation in 2024 compared to a loss of £100,000 in 2023, however Jersey Post cautioned that when “exceptional” and “one-off” items were excluded, the underlying performance of the business “improved year on year” and factoring this in, the underlying profit – before tax – was £700,000, compared to an almost £1m loss in 2023.
Net assets also increased by £5.8m to £20.9m following an independent re-valuation of the company’s property portfolio.
