Author: Archive

India Post may become exclusive carrier of letters below 500gm

Posted by | Feb 8, 2006 | |

In a bid to clip the wings of private courier services, the government is considering amendment of the law to give itself the exclusive right to carry letters weighing below 500 grams. This will facilitate Department of Posts to regain the lucrative segment, which it had over the years lost to private courier industy. “The present 1898 Indian Postal Act exclusively gives the right to Department of Posts to carry letters… It does not allow private couriers to carry letters, it only allows them to carry documents. But these private companies are carrying letters in the name of documents which is in anyway a violation of the Act,” Shakeel Ahmad, Minister of State for IT and Telecom told PTI. “So we are trying to plug-in the loopholes by proposing changes in the Act”, he said.

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New rules for UK postcode database

Posted by | Feb 8, 2006 | |

Tougher guidelines are to be imposed on Royal Mail’s postcode service for businesses after concerns that some customers were being favoured over others.
Postcomm, the regulator, believes that some businesses were concerned that the Royal Mail’s postcode database, including updates, were not available to all users. The database of 27 million addresses helps businesses to quickly find much of a customer’s full address by using their postcode details only. The regulator is thought to be concerned that all businesses did not have access to regular updates of the database.
Royal Mail charges businesses a minimum of Pounds 750 a year for the service, with charges increased according to the number of registered users within each business.

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Japan Post unions may be merged under privatized firm

Posted by | Feb 8, 2006 | |

The two labor unions of Japan Post may be integrated into a 230,000-strong union by the time the public corporation is privatized starting in October 2007, a union leader said Wednesday. All Japan Postal Labor Union Chairman Akira Miyashita told a meeting of the 87,000-member union’s central committee that the union will consider its integration with the 140,000-member Japan Postal Workers’ Union to increase their bargaining power. The All Japan Postal Labor Union spun off in 1965 from the Japan Postal Workers’ Union, which was founded in 1946.

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UK Royal Mail faces fine over crime outbreak

Posted by | Feb 8, 2006 | |

Royal Mail is to face a multimillion-pound fine and be censured over its recruitment procedures after outbreaks of organised crime at sorting offices, The Times has learnt. Postcomm, the regulator, is finalising its first action against Royal Mail for jeopardising “mail integrity” and is expected to levy a substantial fine in the next few days. The watchdog has found “a number of shortcomings”, but it is especially concerned about the use of agency staff by Royal Mail, which it feels were not scrutinised sufficiently. The report will ask Royal Mail to review its procedures. Large-scale crime at Royal Mail has been revealed several times in recent years through undercover investigations such as Channel Four’s Dispatches programme and by high-profile court cases.

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USPS Board approves development of new sorting technology

Posted by | Feb 8, 2006 | |

The Postal Service took another step toward completely automating the mail sorting process with the approval by the agency’s Board of Governors today of a new technology. The Board approved the redirection of funds toward the development and testing of a Flats Sequencing System (FSS) which will allow the sequencing of larger mail pieces in delivery point order. Flat mail – which includes large envelopes, catalogs, magazines, and newspapers – is one of the most labor-intensive categories of mail to process, sort and deliver due to variations in size, thickness and address label placement. Similar to the Delivery Bar Code Sorters that were developed and implemented under the successful Corporate Automation Plan for letter mail, the Flats Sequencing System will arrange flats in the order of delivery. This will reduce the time letter carriers need to prepare mail for delivery.

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UK ANC plans to deliver on back of GBP37m deal

Posted by | Feb 8, 2006 | |

Directors of one of the UK’s largest parcel carriers have increased their stake in the firm after completing a GBP37.3 million funding deal. ANC Group chief executive Mark Gittins and his management team now hold a 73 per cent stake in the Newcastle company after successfully agreeing to buy 50 per cent from institutional investors. Following the deal, the management team plans to increase investment in its vehicle fleet and is targeting further strong growth over the next three years. The team took over in 2001 and has since invested GBP10 million in growing the business, which employs 1,700. Mr Gittins said the deal would allow the company to gain an advantage amid consolidation in a market worth GBP2.5 billion a year. He said: “The express parcels sector is very competitive and ANC Group has not only held its unit cost base, but investment has given us the capacity to handle a further 35 million parcels a year.

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Private delivery firms concerned over China postal law

Posted by | Feb 8, 2006 | |

Shanghai’s private express delivery firms will lobby the government for ‘fairness’ amid fears the latest draft for a new Chinese postal law will seriously disadvantage their businesses, the Shanghai Daily reported. The latest draft, written by China Post, allows the state-backed firm to monopolize express delivery of all mail and goods lighter than 350 grams. Previous drafts allowed private firms to handle deliveries under 350 grams as long as it was not personal mail, the paper said. The new draft prevents private firms from delivering air tickets, business contracts, customs clearance papers, and greeting cards, among other items. Those items account for at least 70 pct of the current business, Liu Heping, vice general manager of Shanghai East Union Express Co, one of the city’s biggest private delivery firms, told the paper.

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DHL Express sees revenue booster in Asia Pacific

Posted by | Feb 8, 2006 | |

DHL Express expects its express delivery business in Malaysia to record double-digit revenue growth this year, in line with forecasts for the rest of Asia Pacific. Its senior vice-president for South-East Asia Yasmin Aladad Khan said last year DHL’s operations in Asia Pacific performed “extremely well”. “We expect (revenue growth for) 2006 to be the same if not better than last year’s. This is because Asia Pacific is the engine to drive future growth in the global air cargo market, and South-East Asia, in which Malaysia is part of, is going to benefit from it,” she told a news conference after the launch of DHL Express (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd’s new facility at Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang last week.

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