New TNT service taps demand for speedier express service

Called the Emergency Express service, the premier delivery service literally ensures that a customer’s urgent overseas shipments get out on the first available flight and is timed around a customer’s schedule with 24X7 immediate response and pick up.

TNT’s latest innovation taps on the growing demand for even speedier express services as there is a strong need to maintain shorter business cycles and low downtimes to avoid holding inventory costs and obsolete products.

This is particularly the case among high tech and aviation industries where managing business continuity for enterprise customers is vital. The perishable nature of some specimens within the life science industry also requires time critical services.

Onno Boots, regional managing director of TNT South East Asia, said: “In Asia, time critical services has been one of the biggest growth drivers with a 100 per cent growth in shipments in the past year.

Currently, for businesses in the high tech and aviation industries where spare parts are of high value and tend to be centralised in central distribution centres, many of these businesses rely on their own staff to help deliver emergency shipments by purchasing a ticket on the next available flight.

The situation is similar for the life sciences industry where medical devices and life saving medicines are of high value and are required urgently.

TNT has put in place a dedicated Emergency Express team in Asia who are on standby 24 hours, seven days a week, to meet the critical on-time pick-up and delivery of urgent shipments.

Instead of using fixed express networks, TNT provides a customised routing system to select the first available flight out for immediate deliveries of urgent shipments. As a result, consignments on the Emergency Express service can reach any major city in South East Asia as fast as between six and 16 hours.

This is a quarter of the transit time required for a normal express consignment which typically takes 24 hours.

Currently available in all major cities across seven countries in Asia – namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan – TNT has plans to expand the service to include Korea, Taiwan and China before the end of this year.