Thailand Post Brand Guidelines: Rama V’s 1883 Post, the CAT Years & the 2003 Company

A trial letter service on the Chao Phraya.

Thailand Post traces its postal service to 4 August 1883, when a trial letter service opened in Bangkok and Thonburi under King Chulalongkorn (Rama V). The company’s own history says the idea was put to the king in 1880 and that he appointed his younger brother, Prince Bhanurangsi Savangwongse, who had organised delivery of a daily government gazette, to direct the new Post Department. The first office stood in a large building on the Chao Phraya River at the north mouth of Khlong Ong Ang, known as the Praisaniyakan; Thai Wikipedia says it was later demolished to make way for the Phra Pokklao Bridge.

Before then, English Wikipedia says, messages between Bangkok and provincial outposts went by herald or fast boat, and a British Consular Post Office opened in Bangkok in 1858 following the Bowring Treaty with Britain. That office closed on 1 July 1885, the day Siam joined the Universal Postal Union and began its own international service. Thai Wikipedia adds that domestic service reached the provinces from 27 July 1885, starting with Samut Prakan and Nakhon Khuean Khan (today’s Phra Pradaeng), and arrived in Chiang Mai in October that year. A postal act followed in 1885, the company says.

In 1898 the Post Department merged with the older Telegraph Department to form the Post and Telegraph Department. Under King Vajiravudh (Rama VI), according to the company, post and telegraph offices opened in all 18 of the country’s monthon, or regional circles, and mail began to travel by motor vehicle and on domestic air routes. Thai Wikipedia dates the opening of the General Post Office on Charoen Krung Road in Bang Rak to 1940. For the Second World War years, Thailand Post’s history says that the Post and Telegraph Department never stopped working.

Solot stamps, EMS and the counter.

Stamps have been part of the identity from the start. The company names the Solot series as the country’s first set of stamps, and English Wikipedia dates the first Siamese stamp issue to 4 August 1883, the day the service opened. The company also credits the early department with the first printed postcards, a training school for postal staff and a second post office in the capital as traffic grew.

The modern business is wider than letters. Thai Wikipedia groups it into postal services at home and abroad; express and parcel delivery, including EMS and the Logispost service; financial services such as online money orders and bill payment; and retail, from boxes and envelopes to stamps and collectables. It also records that in 2024 the company began selling its own Prai drinking water at post offices, along with rice and coffee.

The network has its own vocabulary. Thai Wikipedia describes mail centres, such as the Bangkok Mail Centre near Hua Lamphong station, which collect and sort letters and parcels from local offices and send them on by road, rail or air; branch offices that report to a main office and share its postcode; and temporary offices that open at events such as the Red Cross fair and National Book Week.

Counter services remain part of daily trade. In April 2026 the Bangkok Post reported that Thailand Post would add a temporary fuel surcharge to domestic EMS and e-CoPost items from 16 April, a day after three private parcel carriers had announced one, while keeping normal fees for letters, registered mail and standard parcels. The paper reported that the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society had asked the company to hold its rates until after the Songkran holiday.

Design and documentation.

Postal operators are among the oldest names a country carries. Many began as royal or state services centuries ago and became companies only in recent decades, and their identities often hold on to symbols from that past while the business shifts from letters to parcels. Colour does much of the work: red, yellow, blue and orange wordmarks appear on post boxes, vans, uniforms and counters, and a colour can outlast the institution that first chose it. Denmark’s postal service wore red and yellow even before it was nationalised in 1711, and Sweden’s has used a post horn with a crown since its foundation in 1636, according to English Wikipedia.

The symbols repeat across borders. Post horns appear in several European marks; envelopes, birds in flight and arrows suggest movement elsewhere. Names matter too. Many operators use the national name in the local language, or in two or three languages at once, and some now trade under a group name that sits above the post office itself.

Their public faces have changed with the work. Websites now lead with parcels, tracking and delivery options, then letters and stamps and, for some operators, payments, money transfers or banking. Parcel lockers, service points inside shops, delivery vans and counter photography have become as common in their imagery as the post box. Stamp issues remain a design programme of their own, with commemorative sets and products for collectors, and philately keeps older issues in view.

Most of these operators are state-owned, or were until recently, so laws, annual reports and press releases are the main record of their ownership and structure. This guide sets out what those records and independent press say about each operator’s history, ownership and visual habits, and marks the companies’ own claims as theirs.

From government department to state company.

The corporate shape changed twice in the late twentieth century. On 25 February 1977 the operating side of the Post and Telegraph Department passed to the new Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT), a state enterprise set up under a 1976 act, while the department kept its policy and radio-frequency work, the company says. CAT ran both post and telecommunications and moved its head office to Lak Si district, Bangkok, in 1986.

After a cabinet resolution on 8 July 2003, CAT was split in two, and Thailand Post Co., Ltd. and CAT Telecom were registered as companies on 14 August 2003, according to the company. Thai Wikipedia says Thailand Post took over all postal work and ran telegraph services under contract for CAT Telecom until 30 April 2008. It remains a state enterprise, now under the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, according to Thai Wikipedia; the Bangkok Post named Dhanant Subhadrabandhu as its president and chief executive in April 2026.

The company’s current vision line, on its website, is “Delivering Sustainable Growth through Postal Network,” and it sums up its staff culture as “Sustainable POST,” an acronym for professional, over-delivering, speedy and trendy service. Its Thai name, Praisani Thai, sits beside the English one across its pages.

For a design guide, Thailand Post shows how a postal service can carry a royal-era history, a stamp tradition and a parcel business under one name in two scripts. Compare Pos Malaysia, a neighbouring Southeast Asian postal operator, and SingPost. For this guide we use a deep red, a navy and a warm white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Thailand Post’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.