Deya set to offer rapid response deliveries
Deya set to offer rapid response deliveries
From THE TIMES, September 18th, 2001
Christine Buckley
AT FIRST sight, Deya, a small private distribution company from Wokingham, seems an unlikely candidate to launch one of the most controversial services seen in the postal network.
Deya wants to go where the might of Royal Mail has often feared to tread and offer a mail delivery service for areas hit by industrial action. It aims to offer service for council tax bills, housing benefit payments and gas, water and electricity bills. The scheme is a big jump from its other work – delivering telephone directories, Ikea catalogues and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.
Deya believes it is perfectly positioned to offer a rapid response delivery for councils and utilities that are anxious to get their bills past postal pickets. It did a rush job delivering umbrellas for Lambert and Butler.
Like the bill-senders, the cigarette company was keen to beat adversity and circulate promotional umbrellas quickly before tobacco advertising was banned.
The umbrellas were dispatched to 800,000 unsuspecting smokers within 13 days.
Its 20,000-strong delivery work for Mills & Boon was part of a campaign to prove to the public that the novels were not old-fashioned and slushy. A large part of Birmingham was surprised to find romance delivered to its doorsteps, courtesy of Deya.
Of course, a national or localised strike by the Communication Workers Union would present other challenges. But Paul Spain, managing director of Deya, declines the soubriquet of strikebreaker. “I wouldn’t quite put it that way. We would be offering a service to utilities largely. We wouldn’t be looking to handle other mail. I don’t think we would be picketed.
We wouldn’t be trying to break the strike; just to get some normality to the situation.”
Deya does not yet know when it will weigh into a dispute. When the premium service will be triggered will depend on the licence it is awarded.
The company needs to limit the size of its special industrial action service partly because of its own size. Deya has just 35 staff in Wokingham and another 15 at a transport division near York. It does, of course, call upon a network of other companies in order to deliver telephone directories, Mills & Boon and cigarette umbrellas to homes throughout the country. Deya sends out 20 million directories each year and handles about three million Ikea catalogues.
Deya’s other claim to expertise for outsourcing postal services is that it pioneered the outsourcing of BT’s delivery of directories and Yellow Pages in 1982. Then the group went under the name of Spain, its founder.
In the true spirit of Consignia and other newly named organisations, Deya is proud to say that its name is meaningless. Well not quite. Deya is a village in Majorca. In searching for a snazzy, Web-friendly name, Spain wanted to continue the Spanish connection.
One thing is certain though, Deya will soon be on a lot more people’s lips – especially during its first dispute.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2001
THE TIMES, 18th September 2001
