Emirates Post buys fleet for courier service

Emirates Post has commissioned two aircraft to begin an international courier service by mid-March, a top official said.

It is expanding into the air courier business and will begin operations next month, Abdullah Ebrahim Al Daboos, director-general of Emirates Post, told delegates at a logistics conference in Dubai yesterday.

The postal service, which is also planning an initial public offering, will procure a third plane in the next six months to complete its overall plan of a full fleet of planes in the next five years.

“We are embarking on a major, major expansion,” Al Daboos said. “We already have a concrete plan and it is very ambitious.”

The director-general announced that it has assumed control of certain airport operations in the UAE but did not specify which airport the new courier service would fly from.

Air logistics is just one of three new companies Emirates Post plans to introduce in 2007.

Emirates Post plans to diversify its current remittances services by forming a “money management and movement” company slated for this year.

Emirates Post currently provides remittance services through its Wall Street Exchange Centre, but plans to open multiple offices in Asia and Europe with the new company to take advantage of the multi-billion dollar worldwide remittances industry. New offices are targeted for the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, Al Daboos said.

Emirates Post will also create a national trucking service to complement its other ground delivery operations.

The government service is in the process of forming a parent company called Emirates Post Group to oversee its rapidly expanding family of subsidiaries.

At the conference, Sultan Al Mansouri, Minister of Development for Government Sector of the UAE, also told delegates that the UAE is part of a wider effort to develop an express mail service covering the GCC called Gulf Express, which is at an “advanced stage,” he said.