EMS quickens deliveries to regain share
Express Mail Service (EMS), operated by state-owned China Courier Service Corp., has sped up its deliveries in a bid to regain its decreasing market share.
Now it takes just more than ten hours to deliver an express mail from Shanghai to Beijing, about two hours shorter than before. Moreover, EMS deliverers are dressed in orange, a change from the former green, and equipped with data collection machines, which provide timely information about the delivery process.
With millions of Chinese yuan put into upgrading facilities, adjusting networks and improving systems, EMS has accelerated both inside and outside the country.
It is the biggest move for EMS since it started twenty-six years ago. It has finally got moving when the Chinese express market is crowded with more and more privately owned express companies and global logistics titans.
EMS’ acceleration is mainly depending on upgrading equipment and optimizing operation, an upgrading model focusing on technologies.
Yuan Guoli, head of CCSC, wholly-owned by the State Post Bureau, said that the 324 collection and distribution centers across the country have been regrouped into 168 ones. Another over 10,000 vehicles have been used for collecting and delivering express mails.
Three new domestic routes have started operation, including those from Shanghai to Shenyang, in northeast, to Tianjin, in north and to Weifang, in east. Since August, the international route from Beijing to South Korean capital Seoul has opened for the first time.
Meanwhile, some networks have been established in some key regions like the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta.
EMS increases the number of cities that can get deliveries the next day after the company collects mails or parcels from customers from 136 to 207, and expands the region available for international business from major 128 cities to the whole country now.
Furthermore, EMS operator invested more than CNY 100 million to upgrade the IT system, and supplied over 10,000 data collection machines. Now customers can check the delivery of their express mails easily. It takes only four seconds to check, a steep drop from hours before, said Ma Junsheng, vice head of the State Post Bureau.
Before 2008, billions of Chinese yuan is expected to be earmarked to build a collection and distribution center for air express mail in Lukou Airport in the eastern city of Nanjing , which will be the biggest one in Asia, Ma told journalists at an interview.
Over the past two years, EMS business has surged by 53 percent, its revenues soared by 60 percent and its international business doubled. The operating revenues for EMS business reached CNY 6.58 billion in 2005 and is expected to outnumber CNY 8 billion this year, a record high.
But EMS has a shrinking share in the domestic express delivery market now. Its share has dropped to about 30 percent currently.
Except for private express carriers like ZJS Express, overseas operators including DHL, FedEx, UPS, and TNT have also paid much attention to China, one of the world’s fast growing express markets.
China has a population of 1.3 billion and its express business grows at an average speed of 30 percent annually and its current market volume has hit CNY 10 billion.
(USD 1 = CNY 7.98)
