Thailand Post wants to establish two new logistics centres and an e-commerce centre by next year, aiming to stay more competitive in an intense market.
The collective budget of 12 billion baht will be used for Thailand Post's digital transformation to fully automated operations by 2022.
The move aims to strengthen the company's organisational management structure to handle the competition created by the influx of delivery service applications, international couriers and parcel delivery service providers.
The digital transformation is in line with the Thailand Post 4.0 roadmap, which sees Thailand Post become the logistics hub for the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) project by 2019.
"We need to maintain two-digit growth of net profit for a decade," said Smorn Terdthampiboon, president of Thailand Post.
Last year, Thailand Post booked 27.8 billion baht of total revenue, up 8% from 2016, and net profit at 4.2 billion baht, up 18%.
The company targets total revenue for 2018 at 30.8 billion baht with double-digit growth in net profit from 2017.
Mrs Smorn said the planned 12-billion-baht budget will be injected into four major digital development projects: 7 billion baht to establish two new logistics centres next year, 4.4 billion baht to install mixed-mail and parcel sorting system at 19 logistics centres by 2022, 1.1 billion baht to upgrade Counter Automation Point of Sale (CA PoS) at all 1,300 post offices nationwide by this year.
The remaining budget will be spent to establish an e-commerce centre near Thailand Post's headquarter on Chaengwattana Road in September this year.
Mrs Smorn said for the two new logistics centres, one will be located close to U-tapao airport in Chon Buri province and the other at Wang Noi in Ayutthaya province. Each centre is set to use 3.5 billion baht to cover land, construction, and machine installation costs.
The two new logistics centres are part of the company's logistics service capacity expansion to serve abundant traffic in EEC in the near future.
The new logistics centre at Wang Noi in particular will help ease the task overload at the company's existing ventures in Bangkok.
Thailand Post has 19 logistics centres and 1,300 post offices nationwide.
The installation of mixed-mail and parcel sorting system through its 19 logistics centres project will make Thailand Post's systems more efficient.
The mixed-mail sorter and cross-belt sorter will help reduce damage and errors in sorting operations.
The mixed-mail sorter can sort 8000 deliveries per hour while the cross-belt sorter can sort 9,000 big parcels and boxes per hour.
Thailand Post has installed the mixed-mail sorter at its Si Racha and Nakhon Ratchasima logistics centres, while the cross-belt sorter is set up at Si Racha centre only.
Mrs Smorn said the company plans to install the mixed-mail sorter and the cross-belt sorter to all 19 logistics centre nationwide by 2022.
The Si Racha logistics centre is one of the most active postal and delivery routine services with a capacity of 606,000 pieces delivered daily, including EMS, registered mail and parcels.
Mrs Smorn said Thailand Post has upgraded the CA PoS system at 255 post offices and aims to upgrade all 1,300 offices nationwide by the end of this year.