Parceline, the Smethwick based express delivery company, has been named as one of the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to work for, a list widely acknowledged as a roll call of excellence for UK plc. 691 organisations were considered for the prestigious accolade and Parceline came 99th, following an independent selection process that included interviews comprising 70 questions with 500 randomly selected employees.
Read MoreGermany’s Verdi trade union is demanding a pay hike of 4.5% for some 130,000 employes of the former state-owned postal company Deutsche Post AG, the union announced Friday. Verdi said it is aiming for a 12-month contract. Initial talks between the union and employers are scheduled for April 28. “The domestic economy has to gain momentum. If the employees are to spend more money, then they need a significant pay hike,” Verdi vice head Rolf Buettner said.
Read MoreNew Zealand Post plans to lay off about 80 head-office workers in Wellington and Auckland as it strives to cut costs in its struggling postal business. Spokeswoman Suzanne Carter said the state-owned enterprise faced continuing pressure in the domestic letters business, competition from electronic mail and the economic slowdown. “We are operating in a different environment than we used to. The economic slowdown is beginning to bite.” The 650 affected staff, mainly in Wellington and the rest in Auckland, were told of the proposed changes last Thursday and Friday. Details will be made public on May 3, when a final decision is due. While about 80 staff would lose their jobs, other jobs would be changed and there would be new positions, Ms Carter said. The changes would result in head-office support staff for mail processing and delivery being consolidated.
Read MoreTPG Post, the mail business of Dutch TNT NV, has every reason to worry that differences in value added tax (VAT) regulations in European countries could be an obstacle for the liberalisation of the Dutch postal market, according to a report on behalf of the Dutch Economic Ministry. The report was published on April 7, 2006, the day when Government was set to discuss the draft law for the liberalisation of the Dutch postal market. The bill, which Dutch Economics Minister Laurens Jan Brinkhorst will seek to make effective as of April 1, 2007, would mean the end of the monopoly of TNT. According to local research agency Ecorys Nederland’s report, UK and German companies are most likely to step on the liberalised Dutch postal market. But VAT differences in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany are significant and as a result TPG will be put at a disadvantage against UK Royal Mail and Germany’s Deutsche Post, the agency said.
Read MoreThe quality of An Post’s service continued to decline for the third straight year, according to a report released yesterday by communications regulator ComReg. Meg Shreve reports.
The survey reported that between January and December 2005 only 73 per cent of single piece priority mail made it to its destination within one working day, missing the 94 per cent target set by ComReg. This was a 1 per cent increase from the previous year. Between October and December 2005, delivery within one business day dropped to 63 per cent, compared with 67 per cent during the same period in 2004.
“ComReg is concerned that quality of service performance is falling well off the target of 94 per cent,” commissioner Mike Byrne said in a statement. “This is the second successive quarter in which An Post’s quality performance for next-day delivery has fallen by 4 per cent by comparison with the corresponding quarters in 2004,” he added.
Read MoreDHL Express is exploring possibilities to launch own dedicated freighter in India to facilitate better air connectivity from the country. The company has an exclusive tie-up with German airline major Lufthansa for handling air cargo in addition to slot arrangements with other airlines. DHL Express country manager Chris Callen confirmed that DHL management was examining the proposal of starting dedicated cargo plane. “DHL owns over 400 freighter flying across the world. India is the prime focus of our global aviation strategy. We may deploy dedicated freighter in this region with high demand growth,” said Callen.
Read MoreDeutsche Post has founded a joint venture in Japan with Yamato, Japan’s largest private postal company. The new company, which will operate under the name Yamato Dialog & Media, will be involved only in direct marketing by post initially, as the Japanese state-owned postal operator still has a monopoly on the market for the delivery of letters.
Read MorePalletways now has 27 members a week feeding freight into the international service that it launched in January.
European development manager John McCormick says the number is growing all the time. The present single-deck trunk to Nijmegen is running at capacity and he predicted that not only a second but also a third trunk will be introduced by Easter.
Palletways is considering adding a double-decker, although it willl have to meet Dutch height limits.
Growth of the service is meeting what were challenging targets, he said. “Ten to 15” members already had their own international services and use Palletways only for top-up, if at all; the other 85 members – the vast majority – had never had an international product to sell, he says.
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