Estonia trails bigger countries in resuming US package deliveries
Omniva aims to resume package deliveries to the U.S. this month, but Estonia remains behind larger countries that have already reinstated theirs.
Omniva communications manager Madiken Oja told ERR that the company is working to resume deliveries to the U.S. within October.
"Delivering packages to the U.S. is very important for Omniva's business, and we are working on a solution as quickly as we can," she said, but added that a firm timeline is still uncertain.
In August, Omniva temporarily halted U.S. package deliveries after new American customs duties were introduced, promising to resume shipments as soon as possible. Regular mail service continued uninterrupted.
The company said the customs changes also introduced new procedures that initially had no implementing regulations. Oja said the regulations are now in place, and larger countries have already resumed deliveries using a virtual automated customs broker.
"Simply put, it's a program that communicates with U.S. customs on our behalf and automatically transmits data," she explained. Estonia's Omniva will use the same broker as Postnord, Ukrposhta and the U.K.'s Royal Mail.
The communications chief added that coordinating with other parties is taking longer because countries with larger shipment volumes have priority.
Oja said the U.S. also wants package deliveries to continue but added that the situation could have been handled so shipments were never interrupted, with implementation and practical issues resolved on the U.S. side before the law took effect.
Omniva warned in August that once the new regulations are fully in place, sending packages to the U.S. will become more expensive due to customs duties. The Estonian mail carrier currently cannot say exactly by how much.
"Both customs duties and service fees depend heavily on what's being sent — what the product is and where it was produced," Oja explained.
In Estonia, the disruption has had a milder impact than in neighboring countries. In Latvia, even letter delivery to the U.S. was temporarily halted.
State postal service Latvijas Pasts resumed U.S. letter deliveries last week but has not yet announced when package shipments will resume.
Operating under the Omniva brand, the state-owned Eesti Post provides universal postal services in Estonia.
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Editor: Aili Vahtla
