In 2018, SC “Ukrposhta” strengthened its leadership position in the international delivery market. The company processed 34.4 million international import and export postal items, which is almost 45% more than in 2017. In total, the company’s revenues from international operations grew by 37%.

Ukrposhta transported 7.72 million kg of postal items in 2018, of which 1.25 million kg were transit postal items, which the company has been developing under both traditional Universal Postal Union agreements and in strategic partnership with Ukraine International Airlines that started in November 2016 following the signature of the Cooperation Memorandum and the Agreement between UIA and Ukrposhta. Under this Agreement about 2.2 million kilograms of international postal items have been carried in transit via Boryspil Airport so far. Besides its significance for the partner companies, the implementation of this project is also extremely important for the country as a whole, as it is developing its powerful transit potential, fostering the attraction of additional volumes of foreign currency to Ukraine and strengthening the role of Ukraine as a participant of international economic processes.

The end of January 2019 was marked by another gain for the development of transit business: a transit solution jointly elaborated by Ukraine International Airlines, Ukrposhta and the U.S. partner SKY LEASE CARGO was recognized by United States Postal Service (USPS) as the most efficient one in the tender for mail service from 2019 to 2023 to Ukraine and other countries such as Israel, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, and in February 2019 UAI will start conveying transit mail from Israel to CIS countries by its own flights.

According to the State Aviation Service of Ukraine, Ukrposhta’s import-export operations make up 11.6% of the total aviation mail and cargo traffic of the Ukrainian airports, and even 13.9%, if transit operations are taken into account.

In order to increase the volumes of postal items and revenues, last year Ukrposhta introduced a series of steps to expand the capacity for handling international postal items and to avoid possible delays. In particular, on Ukrposhta’s initiative and in cooperation with the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine (SFSU), the Boryspil International Airport and in partnership with Ukraine International Airlines, a new mail processing technology was introduced with the use of certified handling companies. At the end of 2018 the first pilot routes were launched using EU airports, including the airport in Rzeszow (Poland), to transport mail to New York (USA).

The import growth was due to new projects with two key partners in the delivery of goods from Asian marketplaces. Thus, Ukrposhta and Cainiao (the logistics platform of Alibaba Group, which includes AliExpress trading platform) have created AliExpress Saver, a product combining affordable delivery of low-cost items with tracking. Another important partnership was the launch of a special delivery channel with the Hong Kong National Postal Operator.

In addition, Ukrposhta joined the largest infrastructure project, the New Silk Road (One Belt, One Road). Ukrposhta participates in the China Post pilot project for rail transportation of mail from China to Poland, followed by transshipment to road transport to European cities.

Ukrposhta also launched accelerated delivery channels for Chinese JD.com and Joom, and for British ASOS.

At the same time, the company continues to develop its export international operations. A system of cumulative bonuses was introduced: more than 3800 exporters received discounts for sending parcels. Now Ukrainian small and medium businesses can enter international markets and sell on largest on-line platforms in 230 countries and dedicated regions.

In 2018, Ukrposhta was actively increasing the number of postal items registered on-line with the help of such tools as API, Personal Account and mobile application, and by the end of 2018 36% of all postal items were registered on-line.

In 2018, Ukrposhta also significantly expanded the list of its airline partners that deliver postal items. In addition to UIA, KLM, AirBaltic, Belavia, contracts were signed with Turkish Airlines (Turkey), Lufthansa (Germany), LOT (Poland), Silk Way Airlines (Azerbaijan), Brussels Airlines (Belgium), Austrian Airlines (Austria). Now Ukrposhta is able to send mail to 32-47 flights a day, depending on the schedule of flights.

As in previous years, the main export countries to which Ukrposhta delivered most of all in 2018 were the USA, the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Poland and Australia. The largest importers were China, the Netherlands (as a transit hub), Israel and the United States.

Moreover, 15 workshops of Ukrposhta’s E-Export School free educational project were held and 20 events in partnership with the CUTIS (Canada-Ukraine Trade and Investment Support Project with the support of the Government of Canada), the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Ukraine, and Craft it!, within the framework of the EU funded Eastern Partnership Territorial Cooperation Programme (eaptc.eu) administered by the German organization Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). These projects will be continued in 2019.