September 22 (SeeNews) - Romanian state-controlled postal operator Posta Romana said on Friday it will buy 180 vehicles from Renault Commercial Roumanie and Ford Romania for about 12.5 million lei ($3.2 million/ 2.7 million euro) without VAT.
Supplementing the car fleet will thus make the company's business more efficient by correlating the capacity of the vehicles with the shipping volume, Posta Romana said in a press release.
The car fleet of the company will increase by 100 small-capacity vans and 80 medium-capacity vans, all equipped with diesel engines, the EURO 6 pollution standard. These will be purchased in financial leasing, which will take place for a period of 4 years and will be delivered by the two companies within 90 days of signing the contracts.
"The signing of these contracts will have a direct and immediate impact in increasing the quality of the services offered by the Posta Romana and, implicitly, will increase company's revenues," general manager Andrei Stanescu said.
"We will make the delivery flow much more efficient by correlating the capacity of the vehicles with their volume, and last but not least, we will reduce the impact on the environment by equipping the fleet with less polluting engines," he added.
Contracts were awarded following an auction and include mandatory car insurance RCA for one year and CASCO for four years.
Given the market's growth trend, the budget for 2018 provides for another acquisition of 250 small and medium capacity vans, Posta Romana said.
On Thursday, the company said it has invested some 2.55 million lei in the modernisation of two office buildings located in the eastern historic region of Moldova.
Posta Romana's gross profit fell 35% on the year to 12.3 million lei in 2016, while total revenues rose 1.9% to 1.12 billion lei last year.
Romania owns 75% of Posta Romana, with the remainder held by local property restitution fund Fondul Proprietatea.
The company has the largest distribution network at national level, with more than 80% of all postal sub-units currently operating in Romania. Over 19 million inhabitants benefit from its services and more than 7.5 million addresses are covered by their own postal network.
In September 2015, the government failed again to sell Posta Romana as the Belgian postal services operator bpost, which was the only investor that had shown interest in the privatisation process, did not submit a binding offer for acquiring a 51% stake in the company within the specified deadline.
(1 euro=4.5987 lei)