Philippe Wahl, director of the Post Office, made a very surprising statement before the Senate Economic Affairs Committee where he notably returned to the importance of platforms like Shein and Temu on his company’s activity. Let’s take stock.
Almost a quarter of the packages
The manager notably revealed that the Chinese services Shein and Temu represent 22% of packages processed by La Poste. To put it in context, these packages only represented 5% of the packages managed by the public company’s teams five years ago.
He also emphasizes that this share is more significant in France than in the rest of Europe, which underlines the success of these low-cost platforms in our regions. On a broader level, the parcel activity now represents more than half of the public company’s turnover.
Conversely, the sending of letters, which is decreasing over time due to the dematerialization of exchanges, will now only account for 15% of sales by the end of 2024 according to the director. Finally, Philippe Wahl estimates that the compensation from the State to ensure the public service missions devolved to La Poste is not sufficient and costs the company 2.2 billion. Among them, we find in particular press distribution activities or the universal postal service.
Sites in the sights of France and the EU
As a reminder, this summer we learned of a potential project from the European Commission which would intend to increase import taxes for products sold at low prices by these Chinese platforms.
While under the European Customs Code, packages are not subject to these taxes as long as the declared value is less than 150 euros, the idea would be to remove this threshold altogether. Bad news for the services concerned and their customers, but which could please manufacturers who produce in Europe. To find out more, you can always reread our article here.
Let us also point out that the European Union called these services into question in June 2024 and is demanding information to verify that they respect the rules of the Old Continent in terms of regulations and consumer protection. Moreover, six European countries, including France, have also asked the EU to take measures against these sites sometimes accused of selling defective products, although they firmly deny this.
Are you surprised by the number of parcels that La Poste has to manage from these platforms? Tell us in the comments.
