Latvian Post to install smart mailboxes

Latvijas Pasts (LP) plans to install approximately 500 smart mailboxes, or private parcel machines, in the outskirts of Rīga this year.

Vilcāns said that all major and smaller players, private international companies providing postal services, are represented in Latvia. Competition is increasing, and the number of shipments has soared. Latvia and the rest of the Baltic States are in the first place in Europe in the number of parcel machines per capita, according to Vilcāns.

Vilcāns said that private household parcel machines would allow all kinds of shipments to be received and sent at home without contact with the courier, without going to either the postal department or the parcel machine.

Households will be able to subscribe to these mailboxes for a certain monthly fee. The smart mailbox is intended to be placed on a private property fence, gate or anywhere available to the courier and postman.

“The market, the business that is connected with receiving shipments, has transformed significantly over the past years. First of all, new shipment flows appear, other solutions to how these shipments are issued compared to those historically and classically preexisting. And of course, we are simply forced, and the market dictates it, to go along and look for new opportunities,” Vilcāns said.

Source: eng.lsm.lv