New Zealand Post Office

The Post Office is one of New Zealand's largest trading organisations, and the growth in its services is continuous and rapid. Last year its revenue totalled over £25 million. A far cry indeed from the £147 in 1841, its first year of operation.

It is important to remember its commercial character, even though the Post Office is a great public service. Its assets total over £100,000,000, and throughout the country it has over 24,000 permanent employees. For, wherever people go the Post Office and the communications services it provides go also. Not only are its services essential to the health of our economy, but the linking of people over the distances separating them is an important unifying factor in our society. This close link between the community and its systems of communication means that as the population increases and the economy expands, so too must all the services provided by the Post Office.

Statistics show that each year this happens; the volume of postal telegraph and telephone traffic goes up. A brief survey of this growth pattern gives some idea of the size of the Post Office's operations.