An unattended delivery system for which Business Post now has the UK licence, called eBox, is on trial with several hundred customers.
Three sizes of eBox are available, taking deliveries or outbound shipments of up to 20kg. Business Post claims this makes the system suitable for the B2B sector as well as its HomeServe customers, such as service engineers and party planners. The company hopes by this means to reduce the problem of failed deliveries.
Recent acquisitions in the express parcel industry will help alleviate downward pressure on rates, according to Petar Cvetkovic, CEO of Target Express.
The wave of consolidation that happened a few months ago was for “negative reasons” as franchise operations such as Hellmann and NCN went bankrupt, Cvetkovic said. “They were offering low headline rates that were not sustainable.”
In the last few weeks, UPS has acquired Lynx and Amtrak bought Nightspeed to grow their respective networks – a positive development for the sector, he believed.
Top-line revenue was failing to match volume growth at Target in the year to date, admitted Cvetkovic. He was strongly critical of one company “on a suicide mission” which, without even looking at copy invoices, had told shippers that whatever they were paying, it would charge 20% less.
What is happening at An Post? Losses year after year, suspension of its direct-mail business for five weeks at Christmas and again at election time, repeated assertions that there is no need for postcodes, reduction in quality of service for single-piece mail, and non-payment of sustaining progress to their staff, writes Alex Pigot
Is the company a basket case or on a financial knife-edge?
The answer is emphatically no.
The company is sitting on a huge property portfolio last valued in their balance sheet in 1985 and has just sold its mobile phone top-up companies at a €70 million profit – so its balance sheet is financially solid and there’s cash in hand.
It is not, or at least it should not be, losing money and here’s why.
Read MoreThe Board of DX Services plc announced on 16 August that Peter Brougham, Chief
Executive had tendered his resignation and that this resignation had been
accepted. It has now been agreed that Peter, who will continue to run the Company whilst the Board carries out its search for a new Chief Executive, will not stand for re-election at the forthcoming AGM on 11 November. Consequently he will stand down from his position as Chief Executive and leave the Company on that date.
Royal Mail has today confirmed that its new pricing system, Pricing in Proportion (PiP), which means mail will be charged by size as well as weight, will come into force on 21 August 2006. The date was selected following feedback from a number of Royal Mail’s customers. An extensive communications campaign, explaining the new pricing system, will take place prior to the change.
Read MoreJunichiro Koizumi, Japan’s prime minister, on Monday sought to press home his advantage after a massive election victory on Sunday, saying he wanted to push postal privatisation through parliament within two weeks. Party officials said the Liberal Democratic party, which now has a two-thirds majority in the lower house, might take the unusual step of submitting the bills to the upper house first to save time. Its strength in the lower house means it can pass the bills even if the upper chamber rejects them. Mr Koizumi called a snap poll last month after the upper house voted down his bills, turning the election into what he said was a referendum on privatisation of the post office, the world’s biggest bank.
Read MorePWC Logistics strengthened its position in the Middle East with the USD454 million acquisition of global freight forwarder and third-party logistics provider GeoLogistics of Santa Clara, Calif. GeoLogistics will continue to operate under its own name as a wholly owned subsidiary of Kuwait-based PWC. Senior management will remain in place. “Freight forwarding is a service that will continue to grow at impressive rates and one where strong market participants will continue to distance themselves from their midsize competitors,” said PWC Chairman Tarek Sultan. “GeoLogistics will significantly increase PWC Logistics’ global forwarding capabilities, especially within, to and from the Middle East.” It’s PWC’s third acquisition of 2005.
Read MorePolish postal copany Poczta Polska ended the first half of 2005 with a 320 mln Polish zloty (USD100.8 mln/81.7 mln euro) net profit, up from 278 mln zloty (USD87.5 mln/71 mln euro) a year earlier. Revenue stood at 3.276 bln zloty (USD1.0 bln/837 bln euro) for January to June 2005, compared to 3.26 bln zloty (USD1.0 bln/832 bln euro) in the corresponding period of 2004.
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