A new government report into the future of the postal service opens up possibilities for collaborations with pizza firms or parcel couriers, reports NOS on Monday.

The report, on ‘the importance of post in a digital world’, finds that the Dutch are more likely to communicate via WhatsApp than by card or letter: in fact, physical missives have fallen to sixth place on the list of most popular means of communication.

Caretaker economic affairs minister Henk Kamp said in a briefing for Dutch MPs that the postal system needs reform ‘to make postal delivery affordable and available, and to be attractive to postal delivery companies.’

This could mean new prices for stamps, changes to the number of delivery days and joint ventures with other delivery firms, such as drones, pizza delivery robots and post collection sites.

Letters drop by a third

The briefing says the Dutch send 2.9 billion letters a year, but 2.7 million of these are business post. This is a drop of more than a third from a year ago, but the number of packages has increased by 81% to 350 million a year in the same period.

Kamp said in a press release: ‘The postman’s sack and mail boxes are getting steadily emptier while the demands on deliverers are high. With increasing digitalisation, we must look again and the regulated part of the postal market in the short term. Companies must look for new earnings models.’

He said that this was also necessary to give clarity for postal providers and employees, and that this would be a task for the next government minister.

On Monday the four parties that have agreed to form a government – Mark Rutte’s VVD, the CDA Christian Democrats, Liberal democratic D66 and the Christian CU – moved to a new location to continue hammering out their coalition agreement, adds NOS.