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The Danish postal service has said it will deliver its last letter at the end of this year, instead focusing on packages to respond to changing forms of communication.
PostNord said on Thursday it would cut 1,500 jobs in Denmark and remove 1,500 red postboxes, citing the “increasing digitalisation” of society.
The company, formed in 2009 in a merger of the Swedish and Danish postal services, is owned by the Danish and Swedish states in a respective 40:60 split. Letter distribution in Sweden would not be affected, it said.
The Danish postal service has been responsible for delivering letters in the country since 1624, but since 2000 the number of letters has declined by more than 90%, it said.
PostNord Denmark will deliver its last letter on 30 December.
“With increasing digitalisation, the number of letters in Denmark is rapidly decreasing, and therefore PostNord in Denmark will stop delivering letters in 2026 to focus on being the Danes’ preferred package supplier,” the company said in a statement.
Kim Pedersen, the chief executive of PostNord Denmark, said: “In order for us to create a sustainable business, we need to adapt, and unfortunately this means a difficult decision to say goodbye to some of our colleagues.”
He added: “We have been the Danes’ postal service for 400 years, and therefore it is a difficult decision to tie a knot on that part of our history.”
PostNord lost its obligation to deliver post to the whole of Denmark last year in a move towards market liberalisation, meaning the company also lost much of its financial support.
The government said it would still be possible to post letters despite the changes.
“We can still send and receive letters everywhere in the country,” the transport minister, Thomas Danielsen, told the Ritzau news agency.
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The distributor DAO, which won the contract to deliver public service mail last year, has said it is ready to strengthen its letter distribution service.
Many postal services are struggling across Europe due to digitalisation. The German postal service, Deutsche Post, announced on Thursday that it would cut 8,000 jobs in Germany to reduce costs.
The core letters business of Britain’s Royal Mail has also been ravaged. The UK communications regulator, Ofcom, has proposed Royal Mail deliver second-class letters on alternate weekdays, potentially saving the company hundreds of millions of pounds.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
