New Zealand joint venture launches new brand

One of the biggest rebranding exercises undertaken in the transport sector is under way to coincide with the Lions rugby tour.

Express Couriers, the joint venture formed between Deutsche Post-owned DHL and New Zealand Post’s courier business, is adopting the DHL yellow but keeping the CourierPost, Pace and Contract Logistics brands. The Skyroad Express courier brand is being rolled into the CourierPost brand.

The rebranding involves ordering 2500 polo shirts, 900 shorts, 900 vests, 900 polar fleeces and 900 track pants and painting 750 vans and 40 trucks.

Courier Express chief executive Jim Quinn did not say how much the bill b was, but he said the rebranding was always contemplated when the joint venture was set up, and its execution deliberately coincided with the Lions tour.

DHL’s profile is raised during the tour as it is a sponsor.

Quinn said the idea of the joint venture was to lift the global reach of New Zealand Post’s express freight business and to channel business to each partner’s clients.

The DHL sponsorship of the Lions tour was an example of that business’s global reach, and NZ Post would not have been able to contemplate such a sponsorship.

Quinn said the joint venture had set itself aggressive targets and it was achieving them.

A frustration for competitors has been that no financial details has been made public about the performance of the NZ Post courier unit sold into the joint venture.

Quinn said only that it was profitable.