Focusing on what we can achieve

After careful consideration and a thorough assessment of both technical feasibility and financial implications, it has become clear that our target is no longer feasible at a technical level and, given the scale of investment required, under present economic conditions.  

So, we are stepping away from our emissions reduction target. As a result, we will no longer be stating or submitting our target for validation by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in 2025, including our interim working target to reduce emissions by 42% by 2030 (from our FY23 baseline) and our goal of net zero by 2050.  

This decision was not made lightly and we remain firmly committed to our work to reduce emissions. Our focus continues to be on delivering key decarbonisation initiatives, including achieving our target of a 100% electric owned light commercial vehicle (LCV) fleet by 2027, previously 2025. Importantly, we continue to support our Last Mile contracted delivery partners to electrify.

We’re also planning to continue exploring opportunities to gradually expand the number of low-emission heavy freight vehicles in our network, while investigating decarbonisation pathways for both domestic and international air freight. 

Why we’ve made this call

NZ Post became the third organisation in New Zealand to commit to the Science Based Targets initiative in 2018. In 2023, we signalled our intention to align with global best practice, targeting net zero by 2050 with a corresponding near-term working target to reduce emissions by 42% by 2030 (from our FY23 baseline). However, this target was not yet submitted to SBTi for formal validation.  

We have now identified that we cannot, technically or economically, achieve that level of reduction based on current projections. We want to be transparent about that, which is why we are sharing our decision to step away from our target and the pursuit of formal SBTi validation, in favour of focusing our efforts on the climate action we can achieve.