Croatian citizens will receive a digital postal mailbox in 2026 to mark 26 years of independent operations of Croatian Post.
“During 2026, every citizen of the Republic of Croatia will have an open digital postal mailbox. Information about every parcel and registered mail will arrive in the digital mailbox, and users will also be able to redirect parcels through it. Ultimately, any document someone sends you in digital form, as well as bills you receive, will arrive in the digital mailbox. This will be the transformation of the traditional into a digital Post Office,” said Ivan Čulo, Chairman of the Management Board of Croatian Post (pictured above).
Croatian Post Automates To Deliver Next-Day Service
Croatian Post was established in 1999 as a result of the separation of HPT-Hrvatska pošta i telekomunikacije (HPT Croatian Post and Telecommunications) into two separate stock companies. The state-owned company competes in a liberalized market with international rivals such as DHL, UPS and DPD. Croatian Post dominates the letter business with around 98% of the market and has approximately 20% share of the parcel delivery sector. To continue to compete, it needed to be equipped with the latest technology.
“Our parcels used to pass through several sorting processes and the process had to mostly be done by hand,” Antonio Videka, Croatian Post’s executive director of the optimization sector explains. “There were only eight chutes and the capacity was 2,000-2,400 parcels an hour, which wasn’t fast enough as business kept growing. The new automatic sorting machine in Zagreb has 55 large chutes for parcels, which allow us to program 150 destinations, and we’ve got a further 90 smaller chutes. Capacity has risen nearly 700% and we can reach speeds of 15,000 parcels per hour.”
When Croatian Post officially opened what it understandably calls ‘the most advanced sorting centre in Southeast Europe’ in September 2019, it was the culmination of seven years of planning. The €45.5m (US$53.6m) centre on the outskirts of Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, is the largest investment in the company’s history and an essential development to enable Croatian Post to keep pace with its double-digit annual growth rate.
The new automated parcel sorting machine is capable of sorting 15,000 parcels per hour, with weights ranging from 100g to 30kg. Croatian Post’s letter sorting machines based at the new centre, can sort 180,000 letters an hour.
The project was implemented in two phases. Firstly, letter sorting equipment was delivered and installed at centres in Split and the old city centre facility in Zagreb. This phase of the project started two years before the new facility was due to come online and gave the benefit of an immediate improvement in capacity performance and serviceability to the letter sorting operation. A total of 5 Vantage sorters were installed, 4 at the city centre facility in Zagreb and 1 at the sorting centre in Split.
The solution features advanced software functionality, including highly accurate centralised OCR for machine printed and handwritten addresses and automatic detection and forwarding of mail to recipients who have changed addresses. A series of inline printers print all required information on the envelope.
Croatian Post digitizes invoicing for all companies in Croatia
At the National Storage and Sorting Center of Croatian Post in Velika Gorica, Sveračun was presented – the company’s new service for exchanging and archiving digital invoices.
On this occasion, Croatian Post enabled each of the 254,132 registered legal entities in Croatia to secure one hundred free digital invoices for their company by logging into the service sveracun.hr. Sveračun is intended for all entrepreneurs, regardless of whether they are subject to the VAT system or not, and in one of the next development phases, it will also be adapted for private users.
“This is the only platform that offers a clear and concrete service for sending invoices, while receiving invoices in the digital postal inbox, as well as archiving, is completely free. It is a comprehensive and clear service that the Croatian Post offers to the economy. Croatian Post has significant social responsibility – not only in connecting Croatia, including rural areas, and providing commercial services – but also in initiating the digital transformation of society. We believe that we are the only ones who can do this in the short term”, said Ivan Čulo, CEO of Croatian Post.
Višeslav Majić, the Director of the Product Management Office, emphasized transparency as a major advantage: “Our price list is completely transparent – there are no hidden conditions, asterisks or additional recalculations. Users have the freedom of choice and a clear offer: no penalties, no mandatory contracts, no monthly subscriptions. You only pay for as many invoices as you actually send, with no additional costs.”
Entering the business with the new Fiscalization system is a logical next step in expanding Croatian Post’s portfolio of its own services.
Croatian Post still delivers invoices to home addresses today, so it is expected that it will continue to serve citizens when it comes to the digitalization of business operations. In the past eight years, the company has invested 230 million euros in modern infrastructure and digitalization, and it is now moving toward implementing a whole range of solutions for entrepreneurs and private users.