Improving the quality of international mail: UNEX Results 2009
Quality of letter mail service in Europe continues to far exceed both the European Union’s speed objective of 85% of intra-EU mail delivery within three days, and its reliability objective of 97% within five days. The performances recorded by the International Post Corporation (IPC) UNEX measurement system in 2009 exceeded these objectives for the twelfth year.
In 2009, 93.7% of international priority/1st class letter mail was delivered within three days after posting (J+3) and 98.5% within five days (J+5) for a total of 34 countries. Average delivery time was 2.2 days. These results cover the 27 EU Member States together with Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina (part of territory), Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M.) and Turkey. The posts of these last four countries joined in January 2008 along with Bulgarian Posts plc.
Commenting on the results, Herbert-Michael Zapf, president and chief executive officer, IPC, said: “This is a very satisfying continuation of the high level of letter mail service performance and of the commitment of the postal operators to service excellence to their customers.”
Quality of service performance is measured by IPC’s UNEX end-to-end monitoring system which is conducted independently by an external research firm. Results of 2009 were based on about 330,000 test letters containing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. The passage of a test letter at a specific point in the mail pipeline is recorded by RFID readers. The test letters move anonymously through the international mail processing system, from posting to delivery.
For full results, click here.
