Praxair Inc., a supplier of industrial gases, has named Danzas North America the primary provider of transportation services for U.S. exports. “This agreement meets Praxair’s needs of capability and cost and gives us the capacity to grow our volume,” said Pete Mayer, Praxair’s Vice President of Global Procurement and Materials Management.
Read MoreDHL Worldwide Express, the international courier company, is believed to be days away from signing a deal with the Airport Authority for the development of an express terminal at Chek Lap Kok.
The agreement will pave the way for DHL and Cathay Pacific Airways to announce later a joint airfreight initiative under which Air Hong Kong will operate cargo flights within Asia on behalf of DHL.
Cathay has already leased its first Airbus A300B4 freighter from US leasing specialist Express.Net Airlines that will be used by Air Hong Kong.
The lease agreement started at the end of June and lasts for 15 months.
Revenues earned by China’s postal industry rose 8.5% on year to 24.7 billion yuan [US$3 billion] ($1=CNY8.28) in the first half of 2002, the People’s Post & Telecommunications newspaper reports, citing State Postal Bureau figures. During the same period, the postal sector trimmed its workforce by 19,700 people, the report said, without giving further details. China Post, the government mail and delivery service run by the State Postal Bureau, is believed to be in poor financial health due to growing competition from foreign and private firms, but the report didn’t mention profitability.
Read MoreTo generate additional revenue, the department of posts has decided to develop and implement customised software products for postal networks in other countries. The department has completed a project for Uzbekistan and has bagged a contract for upgrading the postal network in Kazhakistan. ‘We are looking at ways and means to improve the department’s finances. Software development for postal departments of other countries offers huge potential,’ Sanjay Paswan, minister of state for information technology and communications, told Business Standard. The Postal Training Centre in Mysore had been dedicated towards this venture. Paswan said the department was also planning to regulate the huge courier market. ‘At present, the market is unorganised and we need to regulate it. The department is ideally positioned to act as the regulator,’ he said. To face the challenges from the private sector, the department might be corporatised, he said.
Read MoreA key report on the privatization of the state-run postal services seems set to disappoint Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Koizumi, a big proponent of privatization, had hoped for strong backing from the report, which is due out as early as the end of this month.
Instead, Naoki Tanaka, who chairs the advisory panel looking into the issue, said the report will only set a range of options for privatizing mail delivery and postal savings and life insurance services.
“Our role is to offer a vision for privatization, and at the same time present the pros and cons (of each proposal),” Tanaka told a news conference that followed the panel’s meeting on Monday.
The panel is understood to be deeply divided over how to privatize the services after a new postal public corporation goes into operation next April.
German postal services and logistics giant Deutsche Post AG is continuing its rapid expansion in Europe.
A spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday that the company expects to be granted a license before the end of this month, allowing it to enter the letter-delivery market in Britain. “But we don’t have the license yet,” she cautioned.
A British license would take effect immediately. It would initially allow Deutsche Post to make 40 million letter deliveries a year – around half the volume currently handled by Britain’s state-owned Royal Mail service, recently renamed Consignia.
People close to Deutsche Post in Bonn said that the aim was to eventually obtain a full, long-term license for the British market.
A potentially profitable regulatory change has landed on the doorstep of parcel delivery companies. And Yamato Transport Co. is wasting no time in getting the wrapping off its new business plans.
The nation’s largest private parcel delivery service and some of its rivals plan to expand their home delivery of unsolicited direct mail, magazines and catalogs.
These moves are a response to the government’s recent decision to relax regulations governing the sort of mail the private sector is permitted to handle.
Posts minister Toranosuke Katayama opened the door for private delivery companies to snare a bigger share of the fast-growing market on July 4, when he told a Diet committee that certain kinds of direct mail will no longer be regarded as “personal letters.” Previously, such letters, which include direct mail and items like credit cards, could only be delivered by the state-operated postal system.
LESS than a week after the Post Office admitted that it might need a government bail-out or commercial loan, its Dutch rival TPG Group has announced a profit of Eu460m ( pounds 289m) for its first half. Yesterday, Peter Bakker, chief executive of TPG, said the company had had a “satisfying half-year” despite declining mail in the Netherlands because of the poor economic environment. TPG, which owns the TNT Express mail group, is an Amsterdam-listed company with global ambitions. The group has applied for an interim licence to operate in the UK market, and under the terms of this licence would handle 20 million items of bulk mail in the UK. It is hoping, ultimately, for a full licence and Mr Bakker said yesterday that the company was working on its UK mail strategy and would reveal it in the fourth quarter of this year.
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