London: UK Mail Group warned that its full-year profit would be materially below market expectations, as its move to a new automated hub in Ryton near Coventry had led to a greater-than-expected customer churn and loss of parcel volume.
UK Mail said it expected pretax profit before one-off exceptional items to be in the range of £10 million ($15m) to £12m for the year ending March 31.
It had reported a comparable profit of £21m in the last fiscal year.
European postal firms are having to slash costs and invest in new technology and services as they try to stay ahead of new entrants in the lucrative parcel delivery market such as US online retailer Amazon.com.
UK Mail’s move to a fully automated hub is expected to help it cut costs by reducing manual labour and allowing more parcels to be packaged in the same delivery van.
&uuid=(email))