Francotyp-Postalia Holding AG: De-Mail: TNT Post to take over Ident services for Francotyp-Postalia

De-mail: TNT Post to take over Ident services for Francotyp-Postalia

TNT Post and the Francotyp-Postalia subsidiary Mentana-Claimsoft have signed a letter of intent according to which both companies plan to work together on de-mail - the digital and verifiable alternative to the present paper-based letter.

Hanover/Ratingen/Birkenwerder, 05.07.2012. With TNT Post and Mentana-Claimsoft two leading companies and de-mail pioneers are combining their strengths. The leader in the alternative delivery of letters on the German postal market and the subsidiary of the listed Francotyp-Postalia Holding AG (FP) will now be working together in the area of de-mail. The agreement that has just been reached relates to what are known as Ident services. TNT Post will be supporting the customers of Mentana-Claimsoft in this area.

De-mail, the electronic alternative to paper-based letters, makes it possible to send and receive documents and messages through the Internet in a way that ensures confidentiality and is secure, encrypted and verifiable. Basically it works in the same way as a conventional e-mail, but with the added feature of unequivocal identification of sender and recipient.

To use the service, de-mail users must first prove their identity by presenting a form of identification to obtain their personal de-mail account. Thanks to this reliable form of registration both recipient and sender are clearly identifiable for de-mail; the digital post has legally binding force and is, for example, suitable for correspondence with public authorities.

Mentana-Claimsoft was one of the first de-mail service providers to be given a licence by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) at Cebit 2012 in Hanover. With the de-mail portal for private customers and SMEs and the de-mail gateway for larger companies and public authorities, FP subsidiary Mentana-Claimsoft has a comprehensive range of services for every type of sender.

'Now that identification procedure has been defined an important step towards introducing de-mail Germany-wide has been taken', says Andreas Drechsler, the managing director of Francotyp-Postalia Holding AG. 'Cooperation with TNT Post will provide us with a full network for the identification procedure throughout Germany.' Michael Mews, the managing director of TNT Post GmbH & Co. KG, also sees this cooperation bringing his company a strategic advantage: 'Our expertise, efficiency and flexibility convinced Mentana-Claimsoft to entrust us with the sensitive remit of Ident services. For TNT Post the collaboration is a further important step towards establishing itself in the digital communications market of the future. After all, de-mail is creating a new communications channel that will change and expand the communications market in the years to come.'

According to estimates, de-mail can basically be used for one third of the 17 billion letters sent each year. It is expected that ten per cent of them will be sent by de-mail within the next three to five years. TNT Post and Francotyp-Postalia have joined forces to take advantage of this market potential.

TNT Post Deutschland
The TNT Post group has four lines of business in the German letter market and provides extensive letter delivery services for corporate customers and customer sending advertising and flyers. Hanover-based TNT Post GmbH & Co. KG manages dispatch of mailings - mainly produced industrially - for bulk customers throughout Germany. TNT Post Regioservice specialises in providing direct letter services for public authorities and mid-tier companies ranging from collection to delivery. Berlin-based PostCon has its own consolidation business, collects letters from bulk customers, sorts them and feeds them into the networks of other letter delivery services. As a partner of the mail alliance and a shareholder in nearly 20 joint ventures, TNT Post is also actively involved in linking of and cooperation between regional letter service networks in order to establish an independent network of alternative letter service providers Germany-wide. TNT Post has around 2,700 employees across Germany.

TNT Post Deutschland is part of the PostNL group based in The Hague in the Netherlands. PostNL delivers 8.7 billion addressed postal items (including 106 million parcels) to the Benelux countries, Germany, the UK and Italy annually. The core business of PostNL focuses on collection, sorting and delivery of letters and parcels. The company also provides services in the areas of data and document management, direct mail and fulfilment. PostNL has around 65.000 employees. The sales revenue of the group was around EUR4.3 billion in 2011. For more information on Post NL go to www.postnl.nl

About the FP group of companies
Francotyp-Postalia is the first all-round service provider in the area of letters. The Birkenwerder-based company, which operates internationally, offers a full range of products and services for both paper-based and electronic letters. Apart from franking and enveloping machines, services in the area of paper-based letters also include collecting post from business customers directly. When it is a question of electronic letters, FP provides innovative outsourcing solutions ranging from optimising internal processes in written communication, e.g. in the case of billing or reminder procedures or the legally binding, fully electronic letter, namely de-mail. This means that FP customers can deploy a bespoke multi-channel solution in their day-to-day office procedures.

Today Francotyp-Postalia Holding AG has its own offices in many industrialised countries and has a share of the international franking machine market of around 10 per cent. The FP group of companies, which has a history reaching back 85 years, today profits from the increasing liberalisation of the postal services markets and business willingness to outsource outgoing post to professional service providers. The company had sales revenues of EUR159.4 million in the 2011 financial year. The FP group of companies has over 1,000 employees worldwide.

Contact:
Francotyp-Postalia Holding AG
Media Relations
Telephone: +49 (0)3303 525 777
Fax: +49 (0)3303 53 70 77 77
E-Mail: pr@francotyp.com