DENMARK’S POSTAL SERVICE DELIVERS FINAL LETTER, ENDING 4-CENTURY TRADITION

Tue 30 December 2025:

Denmark’s state-owned postal operator on Tuesday delivered its last letter, ending a 401-year-long tradition of public mail distribution in the country, broadcaster DR reported.

PostNord will now focus exclusively on parcel delivery, citing a sharp decline in letter volumes due to digitization and changing communication habits.

“Today marks a historic turning point in PostNord’s history,” said Kim Pedersen, the service’s CEO. “We are ending letter distribution after centuries, but we are opening a new chapter where Danes need us most: in e-commerce, where parcels now outnumber letters.”

__________________________________________________________________________

https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaAtNxX8fewmiFmN7N22

__________________________________________________________________________

The move reflects a broader societal shift toward digital solutions such as mobile payments which have significantly reduced the demand for physical mail.

After PostNord’s withdrawal, private company Dao will take over most letter deliveries, with CEO Hans Peter Nissen projecting around 80 million letters in 2026.

Announcing the decision earlier this year to stop delivering letters, PostNord, formed in 2009 in a merger of the Swedish and Danish postal services, said it would cut 1,500 jobs in Denmark and remove 1,500 red postboxes amid the “increasing digitalisation” of Danish society.

Describing Denmark as “one of the most digitalised countries in the world”, the company said the demand for letters had “fallen drastically” while online shopping continued to increase, prompting the decision to instead focus on parcels.

The Danish postal service has been responsible for delivering letters in the country since 1624. In the last 25 years, letter-sending has been in sharp decline in Denmark, with a fall of more than 90%.

But evidence suggests a resurgence in letter-writing among younger people could be under way.

The Danish public, said Magnus Restofte, the director of the Enigma postal, the telecommunications and communications museum in Copenhagen, had been “quite pragmatic” about the change to postal services because very few people received physical letters in their postboxes any more. Some younger people have never sent a physical letter.

But the scarcity of physical letters has increased their value. “The funny thing is that actually receiving a physical letter, the value of that is extremely high,” said Restofte. “People know if you write a physical letter and write by hand you have spent time and also spent money.”

Announcing their decision earlier this year, Kim Pedersen, the deputy chief executive of PostNord Denmark, said: “We have been the Danish postal service for 400 years, and therefore it is a difficult decision to tie the knot on that part of our history. The Danes have become more and more digital and this means there are very few letters left today, and the decline continues so significantly that the letter market is no longer profitable.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

__________________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

WhatsApp CHANNEL
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaAtNxX8fewmiFmN7N22