Posten Bring, formerly Posten Norge (lit. 'The Mail, Norway'), is the name of the Norwegian postal service. The company, owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications, had a monopoly until 2016 on the distribution of letters weighing less than 50 g throughout the country. There are 30 post offices in Norway, in addition to 1400 outlets in retail stores.

History

Posten was founded in January 1647 as Postvesenet (lit. 'The Postal System') by general postmaster Henrik Morian. It was established as a private company, and King Christian IV gave his blessing to its founding. Postvesenet was privately run until 1719 when the state took over. From that point on, the national postal service was a state monopoly. Local city postal services remained private, but in 1888, a new postal law was introduced that expanded the monopoly to the entire country. In 1933, Postvesenet was renamed Postverket. In 1996, Posten Norge BA was established as a state-owned company where the Norwegian state had limited liability. In 2002, Posten changed its corporate structure to that of a stock company to prepare the company for the expected deregulation of the Norwegian postal market. Posten Bring AS is still fully owned by the Norwegian state, and the liberalization process has been postponed until 2011 by the government. The postal service is divided into four divisions: Post, Logistics, Distribution Network, and ErgoGroup AS. The latter specialized in electronic services and outsourcing. ErgoGroup merged with EDB to form Evry ASA, which Posten now jointly owns with the Norwegian multinational telecommunications company Telenor ASA.

Expansion

In 2002, Posten Bring acquired 57% of the shares of a private Swedish postal company, CityMail, and the remaining 43% in the first quarter of 2006. Posten Bring also owns, or partly owns, Nor-Cargo as well as Frigoscandia, Pan Nordic Logistics, Scanex B.V., and Nettlast Hadeland, many of which have their subsidiaries.