Norwegian postal operator Posten Norge has posted pre tax profits of NOK 151 million and an operating revenue of NOK 25.074bn for the year end 2015. It has also reported that it will cust Saturday letter deliveries from March 2016.

The company said that 2015 was a tough year but also said that it was the first time that its annual revenues have exceeded NOK 25bn.

The company released a statement saying that it, “continues to have a strong focus on cost-cutting measures but the decline in oil-sector activity and the ripple effects of this greatly influenced several business areas’ results”.

Dag Mejdell, the CEO of Posten Norge, commented: “We’re experiencing a significant decline in activity in the Norwegian market and the downturn is stronger than we predicted. So our profit is weaker than expected and 2016 will be another demanding year for the Group. We have implemented measures to deal with this trend.”

One of the bright spots for the company was a 6% growth in e-commerce volumes. Medjell said, “In a difficult logistics market, e-commerce is an important growth area. We are already by far the experts on Norway and our growth now mainly comes from our Nordic operations.”

As with so many other postal operators, the volume of addressed mail volumes have fallen. For Posten Norge this was 6.4% in 2015. The company is also facing the challenge of a transition to digital solutions with its free digital mailbox system Digipost.

“We can see that the decline in the mail volume is accelerating while the number of users of Posten Norge’s Digipost is rising. More and more people are using Digipost and we already have 600,000 users,” said Mejdell.

One of the ways the company is tackling the change in ecosystem is by “adapting its range of services and reorganising its operations”, which it claimed has “helped to maintain good mail segment earnings”. One such adaptation will be in cutting its Saturday deliveries.

According to Posten Norgen’s statement: “As from March, no letters will be delivered on Saturdays. As the next necessary measure, Posten Norge has proposed to the Ministry of Transport and Communications to merge the A-mail and B-mail to create a two-day letter flow as from 2017.”