Balíkovna to Lose Its Status as a Separate Czech Post Division

Czech Post is scrapping the independent status of its parcel service Balíkovna and folding it back fully into the company's structure. The news was confirmed by Minister Jan Metnar in an interview with Respekt, who noted that the service will now be run directly by Czech Post director Richard Godula, with no separate director to be appointed for Balíkovna.

The parcel service was spun off into an independent entity last year, when the previous government of Petr Fiala (ODS) planned to turn Balíkovna into a commercial company and sell it off. After the change of cabinet, preparations for the sale were halted.

In mid-April, Metnar said that crisis management under new director Kment had stopped the decline in delivery quality and that services were gradually improving. However, according to Respekt, Kment's dismissal as head of Balíkovna was linked to a contract with the Chinese online marketplace Temu.

"Cooperation with Temu was one of the key tasks we set out to achieve at Balíkovna. We managed to sign the contract, and it was supposed to result in a significant increase in the volume of parcels handled," Kment himself told the outlet.

Securing a share of the shipping business from China was also actively championed by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO). In January, he told the Chamber of Deputies: "Why is Czech Post five billion in the red and falling apart? Because it isn't handling Chinese parcels."

Even so, the Post's current leadership is now criticizing that very Temu contract. Company spokesman Ivo Výsoudil said the agreement, as negotiated under Balíkovna's previous management, posed serious legal, economic and reputational risks for Czech Post and the country as a whole — a conclusion backed by an internal audit and independent legal and economic experts.

According to figures Metnar cited earlier, Czech Post posted a loss of over one billion crowns last year, excluding property transactions, compared with a loss of 1.25 billion crowns the year before. Balíkovna itself accounted for a loss of 2.5 billion crowns. For the current year, the Post had forecast losses exceeding two billion crowns along with mass layoffs. The new supervisory board has already taken steps to turn the company around and intends to preserve its branch network and roughly 19,000 jobs.

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Source: novinky.cz