News that Whistl suspended its final mile delivery service hit the headlines this week, in the latest and possibly final chapter of its quest to deliver a nation-wide postal delivery service to rival competitor Royal Mail.
It’s been a bumpy ride for Whistl, formerly TNT Post, which has long-harboured its ambition of giving Royal Mail a run for its money with final mile deliveries. The Hub can’t help but wonder if this latest hiccup might be the end of the road for the company’s end-to-end service, but before you make any decisions for yourself, why not reacquaint yourself with all the twists and turns of this turbulent tale:
2011 TNT Post splits from TNT Express, although both companies remain under the PostNL umbrella. TNT Express kept the rights to the TNT branding in the divorce, which gave TNT Post until the end of 2014 to change its name.
March 2012 TNT Post begins a trial of its end-to-end delivery service in west London, following a successful trial of a similar nature in Liverpool.
At the time, chief executive Nick Wells told Motor Transport: “We want to make a significant investment in infrastructure and create thousands of jobs in the UK, but the government is doing little to help.
"We need the government to announce that it is going to allow fair competition in the UK postal market by removing the Royal Mail VAT exemption of final mile delivery.”
September 2013 TNT Post extends the trial of its final mile delivery service to Manchester, servicing the M postcode area.
October 2013 The Royal Mail is privatised.
December 2013 Post NL enters into a partnership with private equity firm Lloyds Development Capital (LDC) and secures funding for TNT Post to continue its roll-out of final mile delivery across the UK.
Marcel Krom, PostNL's executive committee member for international activities, said: “The successful trials in London have shown that TNT Post UK can build a real, profitable alternative to Royal Mail, by meeting customer’s demand for quality, innovative and cost effective services.”
31 December 2013 Financial results published in February 2015 showed that TNT Post finished 2013 on an £8.1m pre-tax loss for the year, compared to a pre-tax loss of £5.7m in 2012.
February 2014 TNT Post submits an official complaint about Royal Mail to postal regulator Ofcom, claiming the company was breaching the Competition Act with its proposed fee increases for private final mile delivery services.
Royal Mail say the claims are “unfounded”, adding: “We considered carefully our legal and regulatory obligations before notifying access customers of the change”.
June 2014 Royal Mail calls on Ofcom for “protection” from the threat of companies such as TNT Post, claiming that the company’s plans to expand its end-to-end delivery service could cut its annual turnover by £200m.
It accused TNT Post, soon to be Whistl, of "cherry picking" the easiest delivery areas to cover, pointing out that the company only delivered every other day, opposed to Royal Mail's obligatory six days a week.
September 2014 TNT Post rebrands itself as Whistl, in a major UK-wide operation and just a little bit of “magic”.
A spokesman for the company said it chose the name because “happy people Whistle, it has great recall and memorability, and because it’s human.”
No explanation is provided of what happened to the 'e'.
March 2015 Whistl branches out into contract logistics, and begins a three year contract with the Jiffy Packaging Company.
April 2015 LDC decides not to continue funding Whistl’s end-to-end service as a result of "ongoing changes in UK postal market dynamics and the complexity of the regulatory landscape".
Whistl says it will stop expansion of its end-to-end services, but plans to continue its existing service.
May 2015 Whistl announces the suspension of its door to door delivery service, casting the shadow of potential redunancies over 2,000 staff members. Whistl said:
“Following the announcement from LDC that it would not proceed with the proposed investment to fund further rollout of E2E we have now commenced an extensive review of the viability and potential for the rollout of an e2e postal delivery service in the UK.
"To stem the losses from the operations we have taken the difficult decision to suspend the current E2E service during the review process and all mail will now be delivered through our long-standing downstream access service until we have concluded the review.
"As part of this extensive review, we will begin consultations with the relevant employees who are affected by the suspension of the E2E service, and with their union representatives, with a view to identifying and exploring viable proposals to secure the continuation of this service.”