LONDON (AFP) - Just two years ago it was losing over one million pounds (1.4 million euros, 1.9 million dollars) every day.
Now, after slashing over 30,000 jobs, raising postage prices and ending twice-a-day deliveries, Britain's state-owned mail service says it has turned around the business to make a million-pound daily profit.
Royal Mail has undergone a massive modernisation programme that the organisation reported had delivered profits of 217 million pounds on its operations in the first half of the current financial year.
It said it was now on course to make profits of 400 million pounds in the full year, bringing payments of at least 800 pounds to every postal worker.
"No-one should doubt or under-estimate the scale of the task we have tackled," said Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton.
"We are delivering a massive modernisation programme, restoring profitability and driving up service to customers. Royal Mail is being transformed.
"A company that was losing well over one million a day is now making more than one million a day on its operations and investing in its people and in improving service to customers," said Leighton.
The results cap a remarkable turnaround for Royal Mail, which recorded losses of more than 1.7 billion pounds in just two years before embarking on a radical and controversial restructuring programme.
Around 7,200 workers left Royal Mail in the six months to September, all voluntarily, taking the total reduction to 34,300 since the renewal plan was launched in 2002.
Of Britain's 15,300 post office branches, 2,400 will have been closed by the end of the current financial year.
The postal operator's transformation is likely to be closely studied in other European countries.
In France many of the country's 320,000 postal workers went on strike in September to protest reorganisation plans they fear will lead to nearly half of the country's 14,000 post offices being closed with massive lay-offs.
But not everyone in Britain is entirely happy about the efficiency drive.
The Amicus trade union, Britain's second largest with 15,000 managers and staff working for Royal Mail, warned this week that without further action the post office network faces "death by a thousand cuts".
There has been speculation that Prime Minister Tony Blair's ruling Labour Party is considering privatising Royal Mail, but for now it remains a public company wholly owned by the government.
The mail operator is facing increased competition as the sector is gradually opened up to rivals including Deutsche Post, the semi-privatised German postal authority, and TPG, the Dutch postal administration.
Some business mail services were opened up in January 2003 and full market opening is planned for April 2007.
The group has been dogged by wildcat strikes by postal workers that crippled deliveries, resulting in the failure of the service to meet its targets for delivering post on time last year.
But Royal Mail said it was now delivering more than nine out of 10 first class letters on time, though still slightly below the target of 92.5 percent.
However, consumer watchdog Postwatch complained that Royal Mail had failed to achieve 14 of its 15 performance targets, and that compared with the same period last year services had deteriorated.
11/18/2004 - 13:18 GMT - AFP