An Announcement From Iceland Post Today (8-20)

Dear Friends

Iceland Post, Stamp and Philatelic Department (Postphil) will be abolished at the end of this year after about 90 years in operation.

We still have two stamp issues left this year, on September 12th. and October 31st., but when they are done the department will be closed down for good and will stop serving stamp collectors, domestic and foreign, altogether.

The fact that the number of our philatelic customers have constantly been decreasing year after year has lead to years of deficit for Postphil.

Iceland Post has got a new CEO Mr. Birgir Jonsson, who is cutting down everything that is not profittable in this company, including Postphil, and that is due to the fact that Iceland Post currently has severe operating difficulties.

To-day, August 20 Iceland Post is laying off about 50 people throughout the company.

The current management of Iceland Post Ltd., prefers if possible to stop issuing new stamps altogether, but on the basis of current law, Iceland Post cannot unilaterally decide to do so.

However, there is some uncertainty as to how these matters will be handled in the future and the company is waiting for answers from it´s owner, the Icelandic state.

If the company must keep on issuing new stamps in 2020 and onward the number of new stamps will be very few each year and there will be no service for stamp collectors.

According to CEO Mr. Birgir Jonsson this task of producing and issuing new stamps could be given to outside contractors.

I will leave Iceland Post Ltd., in September after 20 years in charge of Postphil.

From October to December there will only be 3 people working at Postphil so operations will be at minimum

Kind regards,

VILHJALMUR SIGURDSSON

HEAD OF PHILATELY

POSTPHIL | ICELAND POST

TEL: +354 580 1050 | DIRECT: +354 580 1051 | MOBILE: +354 825 1051 | STAMPS.IS | facebook.com/icelandicstamps | vilhjalmurs@postur.is

STORHOFDI 29 | 110 REYKJAVIK | ICELAND | TEL: +354 580 1000 | FAX: +354 580 1059 | POSTUR.IS |

Not the last such announcement, I fear. Guatemala no longer issues stamps nor do they even have a postal service. Hard to believe that a popular European stamp issuing country is simply packing it in.

https://goscf.com/t/691

Peter

Very sad

Peter. That link is locked out.

Very sad hearing about this. I only have a few common Iceland stamps. It would have been nice to improve on that area.

It's a meltdown.

Thanks for the post. I did not hear about this.

It is almost inevitable given that most Postal administrations are privatized today. Some CEO they hire from running something not remotely related comes in and decides to axe stamps. I mean, who needs them, right? Colorful little things, better off without them. More money for management salaries.

Their previous management got greedy. Iceland used to have at most a half dozen or so issues yearly, now they've been cranking them out like crazy. Maybe if they went back to six issues yearly they could avoid this. I'm not holding my breath.