Q-Post inks QR22m deal for mail sorting system
Qatar’s General Postal Corporation (Q-Post) yesterday signed a QR22m agreement with Germany’s industrial giant Siemens for the installation of a state-of-the-art electronic mail sorting system. The two-piece system is expected to be commissioned by June 2006, in time for the Asian Games that will be hosted by Doha, the Q-Post Chairman, Ali Mohammad Al Ali, said.
The deal was inked by Ali on behalf of Q-Post while Siemens was represented by Ulrich Kraenzle, a senior official at the sales and marketing department at Siemens AG, Logistics, Assembly Systems and Postal Automation. The signing ceremony, held at the Doha General Post Office, was attended by Rainold Frickhinger, the German ambassador to Qatar, Andreas Esser, general manager at Siemens, Qatar, and Abdulaziz bin Mohammad Al Khater, vice-chairman, Q-Post.
In his speech on the occasion, Ali said that the agreement signified a major leap for Q-Post, since it had become one of the first countries in the Middle East region to deploy such advanced technology. He said that all the GCC countries had agreed to install similar systems to ensure uniform standards in their postal departments. The Emir, H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, he said, was supporting Q-Post in its modernisation process and acquisition of new systems. He also thanked H E Yousuf Hussain Kamal, the Minister of Finance for allotting funds for the machine.
Speaking to the media, Ali said that the new machine, which would be functional by June 2006, would replace the existing one which is labour intensive and is over a two decades old. The machine from Siemens consists of two parts — a Culler, Facer and Canceller unit which removes odd-shaped and thick items, faces the mail in the correct direction, cancels the postage stamp, sorts the mail according to the value of the stamps for local or international delivery and sorts up to 30,000 items per hour. The second unit, the Reader and Video Coding System is capable of processing 41,000 mail items per hour and reads addresses and sorts the mail according to the Q-Post sorting plan, sends items with unreadable addresses to a Video Coding System for operator input and prints a tag mark or bar-code for further sorting. The agreement with Siemens, Ali said, marked the conclusion of a three-year study and negotiations by Q-Post.
Frickhinger said that Germany was happy to contribute to and support the vision of the Emir for the modernisation of Qatar. He said that as a member of the European Union, Germany was aware of the importance of common standards for regional groups since they facilitate synchronisation of procedures and techniques between member countries. Ali later handed over a memento to the German ambassador and Kraenzle to mark the occasion.
