Going against global trends of falling volumes of mail items, Lithuania Post has reported that it handled 60.3 million postal items in 2015, up 12.5% on the 53.5 million postal items it sent and received in 2014.

Directress of Postal Operations Division of Lithuania Post Rasa Radzevičienė said: “An increased deluge of postal items has been mostly influenced by Lithuania Post collaboration with international logistics and courier companies operating in the Chinese market, delivering postal items from China to European countries.”

E-commerce packages from China have accounted for increased volumes of Lithuania’s post in recent years. According to Lithuania Post, in 2015 China accounted for 45% of all incoming international postal items. Other than China, the main countries of origin for postal items coming into the country were the US, Germany, the UK, Holland and Poland.

Radzevičienė added “Mainly, these items are purchases from foreign e-shops”.

The main destinations for outgoing postal items from Lithuania have remained largel unchanged from 2014.

In a statement, Lithuania Post said of the increasing volumes, “In 2015, the biggest part of items from Lithuania was shipped to Great Britain, the country containing the largest number of Lithuanian emigrants. Items sent to Great Britain made up 16% of all the international items sent via Lithuania Post, 12% of all the international items were sent to Germany, 11% to the USA, 7% to Latvia and 6% to Poland.”

Where national postal operators around the world have signalled that they are suffering from falling parcel and mail volumes due to competition from private parcel delivery companies and a general decline in the amount of letters sent, Lithuania Post seems to be bucking the trend with its increased volumes. Major online retailers such as Amazon are set to reduce certain operators’ volumes by bringing their deliveries in-house and for many that is a worry.