2022 was a year of far-reaching events and challenges for many people and businesses across the globe, including PostNL. While we adapted our business to the changing landscape throughout the year, our strategy remained unchanged. Facing a turbulent environment, we did everything in our control to protect the financial health of the company, while continuing to focus on creating value for customers, our people and the environment.
The year was one of far-reaching events and challenges for many people across the globe. As well as creating terrible human suffering, the war in Ukraine has raised safety risks and uncertainty within Europe to levels not yet seen this century. The war, now ongoing for more than twelve months, also deeply impacted local, regional, and global markets. High inflation and deteriorating macroeconomic conditions put real pressure on consumer spending throughout 2022, at a time that most countries were still recovering from the pandemic and its impact on global supply chains. Combined, these developments negatively impacted e-commerce, putting significant pressure on the sector and on PostNL, leading to lower results than we had expected. However, we took swift and firm mitigating actions throughout the year to navigate this turbulent environment.
Read moreOur value creation model illustrates our process of achieving long-term value for our customers and investors, our people, society and the company by providing logistics and postal services. Driven by our purpose to deliver special moments, we continuously enhance our business model to adapt to market dynamics and technological developments.
We want to be the leading e-commerce logistics and postal solutions provider in, to and from the Benelux. We have defined clear strategic objectives aimed at creating value for our customers, our people, society, the environment, and our investors. Executing our strategy will contribute to achieving our ambition to be your favourite deliverer.
2022 turned out to be a year in which we were navigating rapidly changing and turbulent circumstances. Depressed consumer trust and spending and a sharp increase in labour and fuel costs impacted our performance. We took firm and swift actions to improve operational efficiency and to preserve our financial position, which supported our 2022 performance.