Covid-19 Updates

Over the last three weeks, Australia Post has experienced a significant increase in demand as Victorians have increased their online buying due to stage 4 lockdowns. So much so, that our parcel volumes in Victoria for August are up approximately 150% year-on-year compared to the national average of 90%.

At the same time, our business has been required to make additional adjustments in our processing and deliveries workforce to comply with the State Government's COVID safe restrictions.

From the very start of the pandemic, we have been clear that our strategy has been to protect our people, serve our customers and safeguard the business.

Safety of our people is not-negotiable and the current situation in Victoria, with massive volumes and severe congestion in our network, has us at a point of concern for the safety of our workforce.

To make sure we can still safely deliver for your customers, the following changes are immediately necessary:

No Weekend Collections in Victoria
There will be no collections in Victoria this weekend – the last pickup for the week will be Friday 28 August 2020 by 8pm and the next collection will be Monday 31 August 2020 commencing from 5am.

Victoria destined Parcels
With the massive demand and workforce capacity constraints, we foresee an additional 3 day delay for deliveries in Victoria. This is both within and into Victoria.

This means, any lodgements made in other States destined for Victoria may be held in those States for up to 3 business days to allow Victoria to work through the present demand.

Father's Day
For deliveries across Australia, we recommend at least the following lodgement dates for delivery before Father's Day on Sunday 6 September 2020:

• Parcel Post and letters – Friday 28 August 2020
• Express Post parcels – Monday 31 August 2020

For items lodged after these dates, whilst we will try our best, we do not expect to be able to meet delivery for Father's Day.

We will keep you updated regularly over the next few weeks and anticipate reviewing the situation in line with the easing of level 4 restrictions.

We appreciate the implications of these decisions and want to assure you we are doing our very best within these extremely challenging times.

I'm sure you can appreciate we cannot compromise the safety of our people and I appreciate your ongoing support as we work through this together.

Stay safe,

Gary Starr
Executive General Manager,
Business, Government and International

Following my update on 7 August, I am pleased to share that we have worked with the Victorian Government and our Post Offices will remain open and operations in regional Victoria will operate as normal.

Our posties and drivers will remain on the road, however we are splitting their shifts, and taking further COVID safety measures which will reduce on road delivery time.

For our distribution centres in metropolitan Melbourne (including StarTrack), we will have a 10 per cent daily workforce reduction (33 per cent during peak times), coupled with split shifts in a COVID-safe environment, ensuring cleaning between shifts and a COVID Safe Plan.

All these requirements come into effect tomorrow, 11 August, 2020.

Our operations nation-wide will be supporting Victoria during this period. Under these circumstances we have had to make some difficult decisions on options for you, our customers, and our priority will be to make sure that essential services, such as medicine, are available to keep our most vulnerable members of the community safe.

This is not to say that any one business is more important than another and I want to assure you we are fully committed to work with you through this.

There are some additional callouts during these restrictions I want to share and seek your support on:

• From this Wednesday 12 August 2020, we will only accept Parcel Post consignments with at least 2 flat surfaces and greater than 16kgs or any one dimension of a carton exceeding 70cm if it is presented by senders as a State break. Anything that does not meet these requirements must be segregated and presented in individual batches by State. This excludes Flat Satchels, Express Post and lodgements at Post Offices.
• All Unaddressed Mail Service (UMS) can be lodged and delivered everywhere across Australia apart from UMS to be delivered to the metro-Melbourne stage 4 restriction area. Any UMS already booked for this week and next week for metro-Melbourne will be honoured on a best endeavours basis and future bookings will be reviewed on the basis of capacity.
• Please check the receiver is open before sending to save time and costs on returns.

Our Business Hubs and/or local depots will not be available in metro-Melbourne to support lodgements or collections so I remind you to please reach out to your Account Manager, local Post office or call 13POST who can provide support to your business throughout this period.

We are focussed on continuing to adapt our operations and are prepared in our Victorian sites to deliver the best possible service for our customers over this restricted period.

Our priority is always the safety of our people and the community, and we're closely following Australian Government advice on managing COVID-19 in all our facilities and our delivery network.

We remain fully committed to continuing delivery throughout our network as safely and quickly as possible and we hope you understand that these additional restrictions may result in increased delays for your customers.

In some cases, we're having to process and deliver from an alternate location and your customers may notice when tracking their parcel, that it is coming from a different location to what they are used to.

We are very thankful to the Victorian Government for their consideration and support and will continue to work with them during this difficult time, to ensure our community receives the essential services and items they need in a timely fashion.

We will keep you updated if we experience any disruptions resulting from COVID-19 at auspost.com.au.

Thank you for your ongoing support and patience during these challenging times.

Stay safe,

Gary Starr
Executive General Manager,
Business, Government and International