Our value chain

In this chapter we cover our value chain, stakeholders, external developments, and the double materiality assessment (DMA), all of which are intrinsically connected. At the heart of our value chain are our customers, consumers, and end-users, as they are both the starting and finishing points of our logistics process. This customer-centric approach relies on close collaboration with diverse stakeholders, ensuring that we address their evolving needs while fostering robust partnerships across our network.

The dynamic trends shaping our operating environment—such as macroeconomic pressures, labour market challenges, and shifting consumer expectations—highlight the necessity of proactive adaptation and innovation. Central to these efforts is our DMA, which evaluates the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts on both our business and society. As well as informing our strategy, the DMA also ensures that stakeholder priorities, regulatory requirements, and societal trends are integrated into our value creation processes, reinforcing our commitment to long-term, sustainable growth.

Understanding our value chain

To create an accurate and holistic view of our value chain, we examined all direct and indirect relationships. Direct relationships refer to immediate, tangible connections within our operations, such as suppliers, employees, and partners. Indirect relationships encompass broader influences, including secondary suppliers, logistics providers, and stakeholders further removed from daily operations.

This analysis also explored our upstream and downstream activities. Upstream describes inputs that support our operations, such as raw materials, energy, and services. Downstream covers outputs, including the delivery of products and services to customers and consumers, as well as the impact of these outputs on end-users and the environment.

Integrating the outcomes of the DMA and stakeholder perspectives into our value creation model enabled us to gain a deeper understanding of our value chain across upstream, operational, and downstream activities. This comprehensive approach, outlined in the value chain infographic on the previous page, supports informed decision-making and reinforces our commitment to sustainable operations.

Our role

Our strategic objective – 'Delivering distinctive customer and consumer experience to be the leading e-commerce and postal services provider in, to, and from the Benelux' – is reflected in the focus we place on each phase in the value chain, ensuring that our services are tailored to meet their evolving needs every step of the way. The initial two stages in this process are discovery and order, followed by our three core activities that our centered around our logistic process—collect, sort, and deliver.

Discovery

Discovery represents the initial stage in the e-commerce value chain. This critical phase is where consumers first encounter and explore products or services that might address a need or actually uncover a need, consumers are unaware of. It marks the touch point at which e-tailers aim to engage with consumers, ideally leading towards a purchase decision. Optimising conversion rates presents a significant opportunity for e-tailers, with drop-out rates still high. To address this challenge, we leverage our innovative digital services to empower customers in enhancing their conversion rates, thereby driving faster and more sustainable growth. This approach enables us to support e-tailers in achieving their business objectives while simultaneously improving the end-to-end consumer experience. Our solutions include advanced offerings such as address validation services within the Benelux region, ensuring accurate and efficient deliveries, and the ‘Bekend bij PostNL’ trustworthiness solution, which bolsters consumer confidence by reducing fraud through the display of our logistic data as proof of legitimacy for webshops.

Mail plays an essential role in this discovery phase, offering a tangible and trusted medium to spark interest and engagement. Through direct mail campaigns, catalogues, and other physical communications, consumers are drawn to explore products and services that match their preferences. When consumers have a smooth purchasing experience, it reflects positively on the overall shopping experience—a win for everyone involved. We also collaborate closely with e-tailers and platforms to offer a range of delivery options.

By facilitating discovery, we aim to support a seamless transition from awareness to conversion, strengthening our role as an integrated enabler in the consumer’s journey.

Order

The order phase of the value chain involves businesses and consumers placing orders for goods or postal services. Here, our business customers—comprising e-tailers, e-commerce platforms, SME businesses, other B2B clients and institutions—rely on us to offer a reliable and accessible infrastructure that supports their operations, including fulfilment services. The smooth processing of these orders or mailings, enabled by our integrated digital systems and customer platforms, allows businesses to serve their own customers efficiently. Trust and identity play an essential role in this process. Both businesses and consumers depend on the assurance that their interactions with PostNL are secure, seamless, and protected. Our PostNL eID system, a secure digital identity platform, underscores our commitment to this principle.

Collect

In the collect phase, we collect parcels and mail from retail locations, business points, automated parcel lockers (APLs), letterboxes or directly from our business customers. This includes returns from consumers. The scale of our collection operations is expansive, handling both regular volumes from consumers and high-volume collections from businesses. Here, efficiency is key, and our fleet of collection vehicles, partnered with advanced routing technologies, ensures that we focus on reducing our environmental impact while maximising our operational effectiveness. Connecting to customer processes and delivering on our promise to consumers is central to this approach. By meeting their evolving needs – whether through late in-feed options or providing convenient collection points for SMEs – we strengthen our ability to offer reliable, flexible, and tailored solutions. Our employees and delivery partners are the face of our company during this stage, and their role in building customer relationships is essential.

Sort

Sorting is one of the most critical activities within our value chain. As parcels and letters arrive at our sorting centres, they are processed using cutting-edge automation and sorting technologies. The sort phase ensures that items are categorised accurately, so they reach their intended destinations swiftly and securely. For our business customers, precise sorting translates into reduced delivery errors, directly impacting their customer satisfaction. For consumers, this step ensures their deliveries are handled with care and efficiency.

Deliver

The final step is delivery to the consumer and end-user, and this is when we are truly able to 'deliver special moments'. Here, our deliverers and delivery partners play a vital role in bringing parcels and mail to their final destination, whether businesses, homes, retail points, or APLs, as we focus on first-time-right delivery. Our employees and delivery partners are equipped with the tools, training, and data to ensure both accurate and timely deliveries, as well as a focus on safeguarding road safety, which is our first priority. Within e-commerce, consumer expectations for next-day delivery continue to evolve and the satisfaction of both business customers and consumers is highly dependent on the reliability of our delivery services. For mail, business customers increasingly prioritise certainty and affordability over speed, prompting a significant shift in their preferences, while we also see that consumer behaviour shows a drop in the importance of next-day delivery.

By for example enhancing our app or introducing a feedback button and delivery preferences, we continue to innovate to provide customers and consumers with more sophisticated options to track their packages and control destination locations, with the goal of creating a 'happy flow'. This results in a more seamless and smooth experience for both customers and consumers. More information on how we worked to deliver a distinctive customer and consumer experience in 2024 can be found in the Customer value chapter later in this report.

Our stakeholders

As a company with a 225-year heritage in the Netherlands and firmly rooted in Belgium, we operate in a broad stakeholder environment, maintaining continuous and tailored engagement to understand their interests, assess our impact, and collaborate across our value chain, supporting our ambition to be the preferred delivery provider in the Benelux. Our stakeholders are listed below, while a detailed explanation of each stakeholder group and how we engage with them can be found in the section Interests and views of stakeholders within the General disclosures of the Sustainability statement.

• Customers and consumers
• Our people
• Business partners
• Investors and financial market
• Government bodies
• Media
• Opinion leaders and society
• Other market players.

“At PostNL, customers and consumers are central to everything we do”