TNT Bulgarian unit expects 2006 turnover to rise more than 20%
Express delivery services company TNT Bulgaria, a unit of Dutch TNT Express, expects its 2006 turnover to rise by more than 20%, exceeding the growth forecast for the current year partly due to expansion of its customer base, a senior TNT Express official said on Wednesday.
TNT Bulgaria is to reach a turnover of about 6.0 million euro ($7.1 million) this year, up 20% from 2004, TNT Express general manager for Eastern Europe, Mike Ogle, told SeeNews in an interview.
“Our growth projections [for 2006] are in the excess of 20%,” he said.
“We will achieve [the growth] through a combination of two things, we will provide good services to our existing customers, which means they will continue to trade with us, and we will continue to attract new accounts from our competition, and to a certain degree the markets are growing generically anyway,” Ogle added.
He said that TNT Bulgaria works mainly for major international companies, part of them operating in the electronics industry, the automotive industry and the clinical trials sector.
Bulgaria’s market for courier services and shipment of large parcels, where 35 companies operate, grew by 22% last year to 51 million levs ($31 million/26 million euro), data from the Bulgarian telecoms regulator CRC showed. Corporate clients accounted for nearly 90% of the courier companies’ business.
The market is to grow further by up to 27% in 2005, the CRC said.
TNT Bulgaria considers it main competitors the U.S. giant United Parcel Service (UPS) and Deutsche Post’s express delivery unit, DHL Express.
Leading local courier companies include Speedy, Interlogistica, City Express and logistics centre Econt.
TNT Bulgaria is to handle some 300,000 shipments this year, up 20% from 2004. The company expects the number of parcels to grow by 50% in 2006.
“We have a new building in Bulgaria and it will allow us to improve our services,” Ivan Vassilev, TNT country general manager, told SeeNews.
TNT Bulgaria has recently moved its headquarters to a new building located near the Sofia airport. The Bulgarian unit of German building group Lindner has developed the one-million euro facility, which TNT Bulgaria has leased.
Vassilev said that the number of shipments handled by the company has been growing more rapidly than its revenue, because the number of imported parcels is on the rise.
“With the forthcoming entry of the Bulgaria into the European Union, the number of imported parcels that we handle will grow even more strongly,” Vassilev added.
Bulgaria hopes to join the EU in 2007.
TNT Bulgaria’s clients send their parcels mainly to Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, Ogle said.
TNT Bulgaria, set up in 1995, runs a network of 24 offices countrywide. Its parent TNT Express, established in 1946, is a subsidiary of the Dutch postal, express and logistics company TNT. TNT Express employs 45,000 and delivers 3.4 million shipments weekly to 200 countries worldwide.
($ = 0.8471 euro)
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Source: SeeNews
