Postal cooperation between DHL and Yamato going well

Cooperation between Japan’s Yamato Transport and Deutsche Post’s DHL Global Mail is off to a good start, Deutsche Post said in Bonn Thursday, some five months after the two companies began working together.

“We are extremely satisfied with the service and with the superb quality provided by Yamato,” a spokesman for Deutsche Post World Net said.

Deutsche Post said the volume of mail to Japan had increased but did not provide any figures.

At the beginning of November last year, Yamato, one of the leading private providers of mail services in Japan, entered into a cooperation agreement with DHL Global Mail, a global leader in mail services.

The agreement allows the two companies to offer clients joint international mail services in the Japanese market.

Uwe Bensien, spokesman for Deutsche Post, stressed that the agreement with Yamato had not had any impact on continuing good cooperation with the Japanese state postal service.

Deutsche Post management is currently advising the Japanese postal service regarding its privatization set for 2007 onwards.

“There is a lively exchange on this at the highest levels,” Bensien said.

In January Deutsche Post chief executive Klaus Zumwinkel travelled to Tokyo at the invitation of the Japanese government.

“Deutsche Post has successfully concluded its privatization and is now putting its experience to work in Japan,” Bensien said.

Whether the German company will take a share in what is currently the largest postal operation in the world is at this stage not clear.

“The Japanese state must first make clear how it intends to privatize the postal services and whether it wants partners,” Bensien said.

But he stressed that Deutsche Post remained interested in the Japanese state postal service. The Japanese government has announced plans to split the service into four businesses under a single holding in April 2007.