Outgoing Australia Post chief executive Ahmed Fahour has signed off on his seven-year term with a huge boost in first-half profit at the transformed parcels and letters business.

Solid growth in parcel volumes hiked first-half net profit to $131 million in the six months to December 31, from just $16 million in the prior corresponding period despite an 11 per cent fall in letter volumes.

Australia Post made the surprise announcement that Fahour had resigned just hours after the result, with the 50-year-old subsquently telling media in Melbourne that he believed the company’s transformation to competitive global parcels business was complete.

He said recent criticism of his $5.6 million salary had not forced his decision, although it had been considered.

The result came on the back of domestic parcel volumes jumping 5.7 per cent, revenue jumping 8.2 per cent to $3.5 billion and gains from business efficiency programs.

“Today over 70 per cent of our revenue and 100 per cent of our profit is derived from commercial activities in parcels and e-commerce,” Fahour said in a statement ahead of his resignation announcement.

“This is one of the strongest first half results in recent history and it demonstrates that we are on the right path to ensuring the future of Australia Post for our people, the community and our important stakeholders.”

Australia Post’s pre-tax profit also jumped from just $1 million to $197 million in the six months to December 31.

Fahour said modelling shows that if the company had not changed, particularly the letters business where volumes have fallen 11 per cent, it would have accumulated losses of $2 billion and needed a bailout.

Fahour said Australia Post introduced a number of innovations recently including new parcel sorting machines and automated letter sorting machines.

He said weekend and evening deliveries, and investing in global parcel and e-commerce giant Aramex, were helping the company grow market share and compete with global rivals.

“It’s important we continue to focus closely on making sure our business is running as efficiently as possible, especially as we head into what is traditionally a much more challenging second half,” Fahour said.

Fahour has rejected suggestions that criticism of his $5.6 million pay packet forced his surprise resignation, and launched a passionate defence of his record at the postal service.

The former banker said the recent outcry over his salary – which is 10 times the size of the prime minister’s – “doesn’t bother me at all”, and said his seven-year transformation of the letters delivery business had saved taxpayers from a $6.7 billion bailout bill.

Fahour said he was not quitting ahead of appearing before a senate committee next week, and that he began discussing his departure with Australia Post chairman John Stanhope last year.

“I have resigned because I have been in this job now seven years, and it’s time,” Fahour told media in Melbourne.

He said the most important factor was the transformation of Australia Post, which was now complete, however there was “no question” that he had taken recent discussions about his salary into consideration.

Fahour’s salary package was revealed at a parliamentary committee earlier this month after Australia Post sought to keep it confidential.

At the time, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called on Fahour to take a pay cut, labelling it part of a “cult of excessive executive CEO remuneration”.

Fahour on Thursday said Australia Post was not a taxpayer-funded organisation.

“We don’t take one dollar from the taxpayer,” he said.

“Yes we are taxpayer owned but we are not taxpayer funded.”

Fahour will leave Australia Post in July, ending a seven and a half-year term during which he grew the company from a $1.5 billion legacy postal service to a $5 billion, profitable parcels business.

Referencing comparisons of his salary to the head of the US Postal service, Fahour said Australia Post should not be compared to loss-making letter-delivery services but to large parcel delivery corporations with which it now competed.

“Those companies are global – there’s none left in Australia,” he said.

Fahour said he was most proud of saving 10,000 jobs at Australia Post through redeployment but Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Print National Secretary Lorraine Cassin said his departure was welcome.

“Fahour will be remembered by workers as being paid millions while presiding over thousands of job losses, the introduction of a tiered mail service and a rise in the price of postage,” she said.

Federal Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and Communications Minister Mitch Fifield on Thursday sought to have the next Australia Post CEO’s salary overseen by the government Remuneration Tribunal.

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