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UK TNT expansion programme continues apace

Posted by | Dec 18, 2006 | |

TNT is continuing to drive through an expansion programme designed to strengthen its strategic infrastructure and enhance its customer service levels across the UK and Ireland.

The programme, spanning an 18-month period stretching into the first half of 2007, has already seen TNT Express Services open a National Customer Contact Centre, three new depots, a fashion clothing distribution centre and a state-of-the-art archiving facility, creating in excess of 700 new jobs.

It began when the company bucked the trend for transferring customer call centres overseas when it delivered 240 new jobs in the North East by opening a sophisticated customer help centre at Team Valley, near Gateshead.

New operational depots in the North West of England and Scotland, namely Preston, Glasgow and Liverpool are, and will be, providing an additional 300 new roles in the fast moving, time sensitive world of express delivery.

In the Midlands, TNT opened a 700,000 square feet warehouse as part of a long-term agreement with high street clothing retailer, Primark. The new and extended clothing distribution centre is expected to create up to 250 new jobs.

The second phase of the programme will see new and upgraded depots established in South Wales and Northern Ireland during 2007.

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Lockheed Martin delivers last automated package processing system to the US Postal service

Posted by | Dec 18, 2006 | |

Lockheed Martin has completed the deployment of 74 Automated Package Processing Systems (APPS) to the U.S. Postal Service under a more than USD300 million contract awarded in 2002.

APPS provides the Postal Service with a fully integrated, end-to-end system capable of automatically sorting high volumes of First-Class packaged mail, Priority Mail envelopes and parcels, and bundled mail, such as magazines or catalogs, with greater efficiency and higher accuracy. The system is capable of processing more than 9,500 packages an hour while automatically reading machine printed or handwritten addresses.

“Our system offers a modular and scalable solution, and is customizable for each site’s needs, which maximizes the return on investment for the program,” said Brian Tanton, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Distribution Technologies.

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Deutsche Post's Appel sees service division saving 400-500 mln eur by 2009

Posted by | Dec 18, 2006 | |

Deutsche Post AG’s new service division will bring about savings of around 100 mln eur this year and 400-500 mln eur per year by 2009, management board member Frank Appel told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

‘By 2009 this division will cut the company’s costs by 400-500 mln eur annually,’ Appel said.

Meanwhile, ver.di secretary Wolfgang Abel told daily Hamburger Abendblatt that the trade union expects Deutsche Post’s planned consolidation of its parcel and mail operations will result in 800-1,000 job cuts.

He added that the cuts will mostly effect administrative and executive positions.

Deutsche Post did not confirm the trade union’s figures, however a spokesman said that there will be job cuts, the newspaper reported.

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Business Post expects FedEX contract changes

Posted by | Dec 18, 2006 | |

Business Post Group PLC has warned that following the acquisition of ANC Holdings by FedEx Corp, it has has been informed of FedEx’s intention to terminate its contract as ‘Global Service Participant’ in the UK.

Business Post said the nature and timing of the exit of the contract is yet to be agreed, but ‘we expect the contract to be terminated by September 2007.’

The FedEx contract currently represents 6 pct of group revenues, it added.

The company went on to say that it does not expect any impact on profits for this financial year, adding that ‘once the nature and timing of the contract exit has been agreed, we will give guidance on the profit impact for future years.’

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Sagawa Express and China Postal Bureau tie up for delivery service

Posted by | Dec 18, 2006 | |

The Sagawa Express Co. group, a Japanese delivery company, announced Monday that it has signed an agreement with a subsidiary of China Post to launch a parcel delivery service covering the entire Chinese market.
Sagawa Global Express Co. the international courier arm of Sagawa’s holding company, SG Holdings Co. will join forces with China Courier Service Corp., a subsidiary of State Postal Bureau, Sagawa said in a statement. The companies signed an agreement Dec. 7, according to the release.
The tie-up will enable the companies to share their delivery and pickup networks in China and Japan and the service will target corporate customers, it said.
The partners will start a trial service for parcels to Japan in late December in Shanghai and expanding it to Beijing and Guangzhou later, according to Sagawa. As for parcels to China, the companies plan to formally begin delivery next spring following a trial, it said.
The partnership would be the first between a foreign courier company and China’s state postal service, Japanese daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

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UK postage price changes from April 2007

Posted by | Dec 18, 2006 | |

Royal Mail confirmed today that the price of a First Class stamp for a standard letter weighing up to 100g will rise by 2p to 34p from 2 April 2007, in line with the four-year price control set by postal regulator Postcomm in March 2006.

The price of a First Class stamp for a large letter up to 100g will rise by 4p to 48p.

The price of a Second Class stamp for a standard letter up to 100g will rise by 1p to 24p. The price of a Second Class stamp for a large letter up to 100g will rise by 3p to 40p.

Lorna Clarkson, Royal Mail’s Director of Commercial Policy and Pricing, said: “Now that the UK mail market is open to full competition, it is essential that Royal Mail’s prices more closely reflect the true cost of collecting, sorting and delivering around 80 million items of mail a day to 27 million addresses across the UK.

The price of business mail services will rise at a lesser rate than stamped mail. First Class franked mail and items carrying a printed postage impression (PPI) will attract a 2p discount for items up to 100g. The same discount will also apply to Second Class franked and PPI mail.
Prices will continue to decrease for heavier weight items, which will support the growth of the online retail market. Royal Mail is also offering business customers discounts for machineable mail, and the thresholds for volume discounts have been lowered for some business mail services to enable more customers to benefit.

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IBM unveils new RFID software

Posted by | Dec 18, 2006 | |

IBM has announced new technology that more easily allows organisations securely share and analyse real-time data generated by radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.

The new WebSphere RFID Information Center technology is based on a recently completed EPCglobal RFID standard called EPCIS, which provides a standard way to securely communicate the data created by sensors and RFID tags.

Using the IBM platform, the data can also be integrated with existing business information and shared with trading partners.

The IBM WebSphere RFID Information Center platform has already been successfully deployed by Unilever, the e-customs project ITAIDE in Europe, and pharmaceutical distributor AmerisourceBergen.

Shay Reid, AmerisourceBergen vice-president for integrated solutions, said, “AmerisourceBergen sees tremendous potential in the IBM WebSphere RFID Information Center, which will be a key component to meeting track and trace regulatory requirements in California.”

Reid said the platform would become the data backbone in a pilot programme that will enable AmerisourceBergen to improve its service by quickly authenticating products and transactions through direct data exchange with pharmaceutical manufacturers.”

RFID Information Center receives data from RFID middleware, which aggregates, filters and interprets data directly from the readers.

RFID Information Center then stores, manages and enables sharing of all or portions of the data with various business applications across the enterprise, and with trading partners.

More information on the platform is available here: http://www.ibm.com/software/data/masterdata/rfid/

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Royal Mail hires 3,000 'address detectives'

Posted by | Dec 17, 2006 | |

Its one of the most frantic jobs before Christmas: making sure your greetings cards are sent in plenty of time. But the scribbled addresses on cards in the final post are proving to be a big problem for the Royal Mail.

The service has this year been forced to hire an extra 3,000 workers to decipher bad handwriting on an estimated 400 million poorly labelled packages and envelopes. Bad spelling, illegible handwriting and neglecting to include the postcode have been highlighted as reasons for post not arriving at its intended destination.

The 3,000 extra staff, known as “address detectives”, will be based at Plymouth, Stockport, Stoke and Doxford, in Northumberland, and will join 1,400 permanent staff members who decipher addresses that cannot be read by the Royal Mail’s automated sorting machines.

Letters and parcels with addresses that cannot be sorted by hand by address detectives in sorting offices are scanned into computers and emailed to colleagues, who run internet searches to determine where the mail should be sent.

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