KUALA LUMPUR: Pos Malaysia Bhd expects its courier business to maintain a double-digit growth in revenue next year, leveraging the country’s e-commerce expansion.
Group Chief Commercial Officer, Nor Azizan Tarja, said the group’s courier business had overtaken the postal business in terms of revenue contribution since October 2016.
“For the past 200 years, it was all about postal but since it had been surpassed by the courier (segment) the trend has remained that way in line with the e-commerce bullish trend,” he told reporters at a panel discussion themed “Malaysia e-Commerce to Experience a Transformative Year in 2018” organised by Lazada Malaysia.
Among the other panellists today were SME Corporation Malaysia Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Datuk Hafsah Hashim, Lazada Malaysia CEO, Hans-Peter Ressel and Facebook Malaysia Country Director, Nicole Tan.
Nor Azizan said about 75 per cent of Pos Malaysia’s shipment handlings were from the Klang Valley but the company is now seeing an increasing trend in shipment from both sellers and buyers from the outskirts.
To cater for the surge in e-commerce business, he said the group, which has only about 4,000 delivery staff in the courier division, had to retrain and reallocate some 7,000 postmen from the postal division to accommodate the demand.
He said to improve its services, Pos Malaysia would also increase its drive-through counters, which stands at 20 at the end of this year, by adding another 20 counters in 2018.
With the service enhancement, Pos Malaysia is expected to maintain in leadership in terms of market share in the courier business by mainly leveraging on e-commerce moving forward.
Meanwhile, during the panel discussion, Ressel said 2017 was a phenomenal year for the e-commerce industry, especially for Lazada Malaysia.
Lazada predicts that more than two million new customers will adopt online shopping next year, with a 30 per cent increase in the frequency of shopping online monthly, and this would further catalyse the nation’s overall e-commerce growth.
“We had fine-tuned our logistics systems with impactful innovations, introduce #everyonecansell for our sellers, increased our assortment to 100 million stock keeping units and triple our offerings to customers through the introduction of renowned brands.
“We look forward to revolutionise the online shopping landscape in Malaysia in 2018 and beyond,” he added. – Bernama