Author: Archive

Deliveries set to be more colourful

Posted by | Aug 8, 2006 | |

Postal deliveries are set to get more colourful in the north west – and bike-riding posties dressed in bright orange could soon be a familiar sight.

For a rival to Royal Mail is planning to have a team of delivery men and women in place by Christmas.

They will be dressed in orange because it is the company colour of TNT, part of the Royal Dutch Post Office.

With post office deregulation in Britain, a subsidiary of the firm – TNT Post North West – has been launched to cater for bulk deliveries for small and medium-sized companies.

The company collects, sorts and franks mail from SMEs then passes them to the Royal Mail to deliver, all for a discounted rate of around 19.5p a letter, as opposed to 23p from Royal Mail.

But TNT Post North West is aiming to grow its volume to such an extent that it will complete the service, with its own orange-uniformed postmen and postwomen making the deliveries.

The company, set up in March, has a staff of six, and is based in Audenshaw, but is poised to move to larger premises in Denton.

MD Andrew Goddard hopes the firm will be handling 15 million items in its first year.

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Lockheed to Update Parcel-Sorting System for USPS

Posted by | Aug 7, 2006 | |

Lockheed Martin Corp. won a USD17.4 million contract to improve automated parcel-sorting systems at the U.S. Postal Service’s bulk mail centers.
The Bethesda contractor will install optical character-recognition systems on secondary parcel-sorting systems — known as Singulation Scan Induction Units — at 19 bulk mail centers across the nation. Each of these mail-processing plants has two sorting machines that will be outfitted with the optical systems.
About 5,000 pieces move through each of the systems every hour, said Thomas Moberg, Lockheed Martin’s program manager for Postal Service contract work.
Optical character-recognition technology uses computer software that scans images of text and translates it into machine-editable and readable text.
The Postal Service already has technology to read bar codes on bulk packages, but not all packages have the codes, and the current system misses bar codes if they are on the far side of a package.

About 60 percent of all bulk mail is now read automatically. The Postal Service wants Lockheed Martin to increase the level to about 90 percent.

The company expects to complete the contract work in mid-2007.

Lockheed Martin has provided the Postal Service with technologies for letters and parcels since 1995. The company also has deployed technology systems for national mail services in Britain, France and Sweden.

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PZU to Cooperate with Poczta Polska

Posted by | Aug 7, 2006 | |

PZU group, Poland’s major insurance company, will co-operate with Poczta Polska state postal service. The latter launched similar co-operation with PKO BP a year ago. PZU’s management nominated its Deputy CEO for sales and products Piotr Kowalczewski to hold talks with Poczta Polska on Tuesday. Kowalczewski declined to provide details of the future joint enterprises of the two firms. Miroslaw Jakubowski of Poczta Polska divulged that the talks concerned tightening mutual relations. He said PZU hoped to sell its products at Poczta branches, of which there are 8,350 around the country. Since the national postal service already has insurance partners and controls wealth insurer Pocztowe Towarzystwo Ubezpieczen Wzajemnych, it will need to commission detailed analysis and prepare several variants of co-operation agreements with PZU. Nevertheless, many projects are being considered, including joint real-estate management. – Bank Pocztowy Concludes Agreement with PKO TFI

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Brazil: ECT plans to have its own air postal services

Posted by | Aug 7, 2006 | |

ECT, the Brazilian state run postal service, is considering to operate its own air transportation services through leasing of aircraft, instead to outsourcing transportation. Actually this idea has been taking shape for quite some years and recently gained force with the involvement of ECT in several corruption scandals. A study was commissioned to Bain & Company, for R$2,3mil, on the feasibility to operate directly the 23 routes of the main service, and also a methodology for tender the leasing of aircraft. It is not discarded the adoption of a mixed own and outsourcing main transportation system, providing costs are cut without hindering the performance.

A recent auditing on ECT, following the political scandals, showed several irregular procedures.

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UPS Express Stores Debut in Shanghai

Posted by | Aug 7, 2006 | |

UPS, announced on August 2 the formal opening of its two Express stores in Shanghai, the first of its kind in China.

One is located in Hongqiao Business District in Changning District and the other in the downtown areas of Lujiazui Central Business District in Pudong, Shanghai, the economic and commercial hub in eastern China.

The UPS Express stores are expected to bring more convenience to the business offices and small companies in these districts by providing faster delivery and pickup services, Ken Torok, president of UPS Asia Pacific told journalists at an interview.

The stores will offer a full range of shipping options for international shipments including UPS worldwide express plus, UPS worldwide express, UPS 10-kg box delivery services and UPS 25-kg box delivery services. In addition, they will supply customers with professional consulting services.

In recent years, overseas leading express service providers have specialized in expanding logistics market, and now they are also show interest to small mail express business.

State-owned express operator EMS, private express carriers like ZJS Express and overseas operators including FedEx, TNT and DHL kick off overheating competition in China market at present.

But 90 percent of domestic private express operators just run inner-provincial and regional business, industry analysts said.

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Federal Express to benefit from Malaysia-US Free Trade Agreement

Posted by | Aug 7, 2006 | |

Federal Express Services (M) Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp, says it will gain from the implementation of the US-Malaysia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Its new managing director for Malaysia and Brunei, K. Don Premaseri, said the FTA was expected to boost the company’s air cargo-handling business. “Definitely there will be a lot of room to expand in Malaysia. “In fact, Malaysia is poised to record higher growth with the implementation of the FTA,” he told a media briefing here today. Premaseri said the USD44 billion (USD1=RM3.65) bilateral trade between the two countries in 2005, as well as the US Trade Department’s forecast that exports to Malaysia would double within five years (with the conclusion of the FTA) would bring significantly positive growth to the company. “Also, based on the fact that 40 percent of the world trade by value are actually moved by aircargo, you can expect what kind of growth that will come about. “The company expects a positive trend in the coming years. “We have already ordered 10 A380 super Airbus aircraft for our global network operations.

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FedEx buys land for Florida hub

Posted by | Aug 7, 2006 | |

FedEx Corp. has inked a land deal to build 200,000 square feet of package and freight distribution facilities in West Palm Beach, Fla.

The proposed 120,000-square-foot FedEx Ground hub and 80,000-square-foot FedEx Freight facility are scheduled to open by July 2007.

The new hub is part of nationwide effort by Memphis, Tenn.-based FedEx to step up capacity and speed for handling packages in the face of mounting competition by United Parcel Service Inc. and DHL International GmbH.

FedEx has said it intends to spend USD 1.8 billion to expand its ground network. That plan includes construction of nine new hubs and expansion of 30. The move is intended to double FedEx’s ability to move packages by 2010.

In May, UPS announced plans for a 1.1 million-square-foot expansion of its Worldport package-handling hub in Louisville, bringing the facility to a total 5.1 million square feet, or the equivalent of more than 113 football fields. The expansion will cost more than USD 1 billion, and is expected to create 1,284 full-time jobs and 3,787 permanent part-time positions.

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Parcel services circle Belgian rival

Posted by | Aug 7, 2006 | |

Leading European parcels delivery groups were on Friday, Aug. 4, circling ABX Belgium, the domestic parcels service that the Belgian national railway company Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Belges, or SNCB Holding, must sell by the end of the year.
An SNCB spokesman declined to comment on reports that several players — General Logistics Systems BV, or GLS, the Oude Meer, Netherlands-based European parcels arm of Britain’s Royal Mail Group plc; Dutch logistics, deliveries and postal services group TNT Holding BV; and the Belgian postal service De Post/La Poste — might drive in an offer.

However, the SNCB spokesman did confirm that “different parties” were interested in the business.
One banking source, who declined to be identified, said the three groups would be at the top of his list of likely buyers, though he thought France’s GeoPost SA, the parcels service of the French post office, should not be ruled out as a possible bidder. He also said United Parcel Service of America Inc., which last year bought U.K. parcel delivery group Lynx Express Ltd. and had signaled plans to grow further in the sector, could also be a player.
The parcels business, which the banker said could fetch around euro 70 million, roughly equivalent to annual revenue, has been carved out of ABX Logistics Worldwide SA/NV, the international freight-forwarding business that SNCB sold to 3i Group plc and Fortis Banque SA/NV on Aug 3

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