After a 2021 boom in online commerce, which gave wings to the courier sector, 2022 was a cold shower with significant increases in operating costs, and especially fuel costs, which caught couriers in the midst of huge investments in their logistics base, software applications and delivery fleet. Therefore courier market ended 2022 with modest results compared to forecasts: turnover by industry rose from €1.3 billion to €1.4 billion, while profit fell from €139.4 million to just €101.8 million. 2023 brought further growth of 8-10% on the back of rising e-commerce orders, but more from outside the country than from domestic retailers. But profits still suffer.
At the beginning of 2023 in Romania there were more than 4,248 companies registered with CAEN code 5320 – Other postal and courier activities – which together achieved a turnover of €1.4 billion (0.25% of Romania’s turnover) and a profit of €101.8 million (0.19% of Romania’s net profit) with 22,781 employees (0.57% of the national total).
The top 66 couriers by turnover in 2022 had a total turnover of almost €1.33 billion – so almost 90% of the turnover of all 4,248 companies in the segment – €108.10 million more than in 2021.
In terms of turnover, the top couriers are led by FAN Courier Express, with €224.13 million in 2022, 10% more than in the previous year. And the increase in 2023 was in the same line, even close to 15%. After a difficult 2022, full of challenges and uncertainties, which put pressure on costs and impacted productivity, 2023 was a good year, with a healthy constant growth in volumes, held by the market development, but also leaded by huge investments, around 35 million euros in case of FAN Courier, both in new warehouses and automated sorter and fleet of trucks and vans. And the digitalization is still going on, with the aim to make processes more efficient, but also to offer the final customers a more user-friendly interface and app to place and track the orders.
The courier market leader is followed by Delivery Solutions (Sameday) with €149.34 million turnover in 2022, which is making big leaps year-on-year after the takeover by the same owners who also own eMAG, with the growth of Romania’s largest platform also reflected in Sameday’s continued expansion, which in 2022 saw 28% growth if we include the group’s other subsidiaries in Bulgaria and Hungary.
For 2023, Sameday reported an 11% growth after the first 3 months, without making public any figures for the full year at the publishing date. 90% of the deliveries depend on e-commerce and even if the e-commerce recorded growth in 2023, most part of it was due to cross-border e-comm, not from the domestic retailers. Still, eMAG reported record sales for Black Friday, which means Sameday should have had record deliveries numbers in November, especially to easybox locations, which helped to reach a very high efficiency of operations. Sameday also organized good marketing activities in order to reduce at 2 hours the time to get the products delivered to easybox during Black Friday offering attractive awards. With around 4,000 easyboxes in Romania, Sameday is refining the service by allowing collecting the parcels via easybox or allowing to send back the unwanted goods also via easybox.
Ranked in the 3rd-5th places are DHL International Romania with 102.42 million euros in 2022, Cargus – 91.44 million euros and GLS General Logistics Systems – 70.22 million euros. Cargus announced an increase of the turnover in 2023 with almost 10% compared to 2022 and also lots of investments in establishing good connections and infrastructure for cross-border deliveries, new software and increasing PUDO locations and lockers.
Top 5 couriers account together for 50% of the total turnover of the sector
Basically, the top 5 couriers together account for half of the turnover of the more than 4,248 companies in this segment. Many of those in the top 50 are in fact subcontractors working in different regions of the country for the ”big players”, so the courier business is actually much smaller than the €1.4 billion recorded for companies with representative CAEN codes.
DPD (69.54 million euros) and TNT Romania (69.43) also made over 60 million euros, with the next ranked company dropping to 42.84 million euros – UPS Romania – and below 20 million – DSC Express Logistic (19.33), Pink Post Office (18.71 million euros), Pink Post Solutions (17.55 million euros) and Nemo Expres Logistic (17.48 million euros). On the 14th-20th places there are companies with average turnovers of 4-10 million euros.
The largest increases in turnover in 2022 were recorded by Delivery Solutions – an increase of €27.81 million (reaching €149.34 million) compared to an increase of €47.8 million in 2021 – and DHL International Romania – €18.07 million (reaching €102.42 million) compared to an increase of just €3.3 million in 2021. A mature company, FAN Courier Express, is no longer making big year-on-year jumps, ranking third (if we do not take into account The Romanian Post National Company) in terms of turnover growth, with an extra €12.61 million (up to €224.13 million) compared to the extremely high growth of €42.5 million in 2021.
TNT Romania and DPD increased by 7% and 6% respectively to €4.76 million and €3.96 million. GLS moved into 11th place, up 3% (+€2.13 million) to €70.22 million in 2022. Pandoras Courier and Pink Post Office grew by 90% and 26% respectively, reaching increases of €3.77 million and €3.06 million: €7.94 million (Pandoras Courier) and €18.71 million (Pink Post Office).
Econt For You (+€2.38 million) has recorded an increase of more than €2 million to €11.38 million turnover in 2022, UPS Romania (+€2.35 million) has recorded a turnover of €42.84 million, DSC Express Logistic (+€2.07 million) – €19.33 million and Craiss Logistik with €2.01 million increases from €7.65 to €9.67 million in 2022. An increase of more than one million euros in the turnover plan also had MG Supreme Group – 1.91 million euros in 2022, Pink Post Solutions (1.21 million euros), Viva Post Solution (1.2 million euros), Post Tabita Tour (1.09 million euros) and Caffe Corint (1.04 million euros).
Top 66 couriers make almost half of total profit by industry
The courier market is very much divided in very big players and their subcontractors, some of them increasing year after year. This is why the turnover recorded by the big players is somehow doubled by the turnover of their subcontractors, money from the final customers being paid once to the big companies and then part of it goes to the subcontractor. Therefore, if we talk about a turnover of 1.4 billion euros of the sector, when we look at the profits, all 4,200 companies make a little more than 100 million euro.
If turnover increased by almost €100 million in 2022 to some extent at branch level, the total profit recorded by all companies with CAEN code 5320 is €28.6 million less than in 2021, reaching only €101.8 million.
More than half of the profit is made by the 66 largest courier companies – €44.53 million, €29.18 million less, from €73.71 in 2021. And that’s taking into account that around 7 of the 66 companies with the largest market shares made a loss in 2022. The biggest loss of €9.12 million was recorded by Delivery Solutions, which, ”as a growing company, investment is our main focus. We are investing in people and technologies with the help of which to increase the quality of service”, according to Sameday representatives. ”More than 50 million euros have been invested in management software solutions, operational services and innovative projects, in order to achieve the promise of maximum delivery rates with an increasing number of referrals. We plan to continue investing in the development of solutions to optimize and facilitate communication with customers, optimize parcel sorting, streamline courier routing or upgrade the easybox software solution.”
Nemo Express Logistic (€3.86 million), TNT Romania (€1.89 million), DSC Express Logistic (€1.59 million), Cargus (€1.11 million) and Poșta Tabita Tour (€1.02 million) also recorded losses. The remaining 12 companies in the Top 20 recorded small losses ranging from €364,495 to €2,913.
FAN Courier Express and GLS had the highest profits in 2022
In terms of profits, in first place is FAN Courier Express with €14.42 million, €18.18 million less than in 2021, due to high cost increases (and especially diesel) and the investments needed to secure its position as industry leader in the long term.
”The level of investments made by FAN Courier in 2022 exceeded 31.5 million euros, more than in the previous year, when the funds allocated to investments were around 30 million euros. The most important projects we carried out last year were the development of the locker network, digitalization, the completion of the Cluj hub, the expansion of the Brașov hub, as well as the expansion of the car fleet. The development of the FANbox locker network is a multi-stage project. In the first phase, this project required an investment of €10 million, which we made in 2022. Also in 2022, we continued the investments started earlier at the Cluj hub, which we commissioned in May, and implemented card payment at the courier and other digitization solutions, which offer customers simple and fast alternatives to use our services.”
In 2023 FAN Courier continued the investments in the fulfillment center in Ștefăneștii de Jos, equipping a new warehouse in Arad (in CTPark), in order to be better prepared for the cross-border deliveries, in the trucks and vans fleet and in the lockers network, the value of the investments amounting 35 million euros.
In second place in terms of profitability is GLS (General Logistic Systems Romania) – €12.4 million – which also recorded a €1.38 million decrease in profit compared to last year.
In third place, DHL International Romania had a net profit of €2.65 million in 2022, higher than in 2021, when it reported a profit of €1.2 million. DPD is next in terms of profit reported with a profit of €2.64 million in 2022, €2.28 million less from a profit of €4.93 million in 2021.
The Romanian National Post Company has reduced its profit by €6.93 million, reaching a net profit of just €2.28 million in 2022. UPS Romania had a net profit of €1.18 million in 2022, after a profit of €1.42 million in 2021, so here again we have a decrease of €244,857. Econt For You had also an increase in profit of €324,500, from €759,081 in 2021 to €1.08 million in 2022, and Bookster Experience ranks eighth in terms of profit with €958,850 reported in 2022.
The next two ranked companies increased their profitability by more than 500,000 euros: Pandoras Courier and Courier Service Expres with 642,879 and 601,476 euros respectively. 20 companies climbed up alongside the large companies with profits between 100,000-500,000 euros and 16 below 100,000 euros, with the rest of the economic agents recording losses in 2022.
Massive investments by major players, also reflected in assets
The largest assets are held by Poșta Română (over €206.54 million, less by almost €3.44 million), followed by FAN Courier (€154.57 million less than in 2021 by €582,138). Much of the investment in 2022 went into digitalization, hub expansion and automation, as well as activity in the Republic of Moldova market. Online retail accounted for 60-65% of the company’s business, and estimates remain for further growth, especially in the context of the traditional discount campaigns in the last two months of the year.
A large part of the decrease in profit of 2022 cover partial the inflation that should have been passed on to the prices list, but FAN Courier decided to increase tariffs by only 6-7%, enough to cover the increase in the cost of diesel only, the rest being internalized and covered by increased operational efficiency. One way of making the service more efficient is also the proposal for alternative deliveries – lockers, Collect Point, etc. – towards which customers are also interested and towards which FAN Courier has directed a large part of its investments this year. In 2022 alone, the company has invested more than €10 million in the FANbox locker network. The courier company currently has over 1,000 units installed, the capacity being almost doubled in 2023.
FAN Courier is clearly a company who invests largely from its own funds, being the courier with the highest number of warehousing centres and the largest own transport fleet: 300 trucks and up to 1,200 vans owned.
In third place is Cargus, with assets at the end of 2022 worth €121.68 million (with an increase of €427,849 versus 2021).
In 2022, the company focused on investments in logistics, technology solutions and international expansion, after logistics optimizations and bringing the network up to high delivery standards were decisive in the expansion policy. The new warehouses opened through the partnership with CTP in Bucharest-Ilfov, Constanța and Oradea are all leased, but investments go into handling equipment, sorting belts, IT.
Delivery Solutions finished 2022 in fourth place in terms of asset value, with €110.71 million, Sameday had the largest increase in assets in 2022 with almost €35 million compared to 2021. One of the main investments made by Sameday in 2022 was the expansion of easybox at home and abroad, with over €20 million being put into this. Investments continued in 2023, with the regional easybox network now numbering 3,800 lockers in Romania.
While warehouses are leased, the fleet of vehicles is another ”building block” of Sameday’s assets, alongside the lockers.
The ranking of couriers with the largest assets continues with UPS Romania (€36.41 million), DHL International Romania (€35 million) and GLS (€32.75 million).
And the value of the investments of the couriers will increase quite a lot at the end of 2023, most of the profits being directed into new investments in warehouses, automated sorters and other equipments, delivery fleets, people training, IT systems, lockers and, not lastly, ESG projects. There is still lot to do, besides investments in capacity, vision and innovations being more and more important in this industry with such broad public.
