Supply chain management company Exel has renewed contracts at all Exel-operated locations for UK retailer Safeway. The five new contracts – at Tamworth, Coventry, Heathrow, Droitwich and Stockton on Tees – totalling about £60 million per annum, range from three to five years.
Read MoreThe EU Commission should decide Wednesday on action to be taken about charges Deutsche Post World Net AG has subsidised its parcels operations through revenues on its monopoly mail business, spokesman for EU competition commissioner Mario Monti said.
Spokesman Michael Tscherny declined to confirm or deny a Financial Times report that the competition services of the Commission recommend upholding the complaint and fining the company over 500 mln eur.
The 20 commissioners should decide on the action to be taken at their weekly meeting Wednesday, he said.
THE IMMEDIATE cause of the Post Office’s troubles is poor management. This much was admitted with his usual candour by Allan Leighton, the new chairman, as he unveiled his strategy for saving the business over the next three years.
The plan contains many of the elements needed to turn the Post Office round: cutting thousands of jobs (although yesterday’s figure of 17,000 is, in fact, lower than most estimates of what is required); ditching the chief executive, John Roberts, who must take responsibility for the mistakes of recent years, and whose departure will allow a shake-up of the senior management; and scrapping the Consignia name, one of the most disastrous rebranding exercises in modern corporate history.
Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt outlined a package of financial measures designed to help Consignia fund its restructuring programme. She said the company, which earlier announced 17,000 more job losses, would be allowed to use #1.8 billion of reserves. The Government did not intend to take any money from the company in dividends during its three-year recovery plan and would fund the Post Office network’s historic losses.
Ms Hewitt said thousands of postmen and women faced an “anxious and difficult time” because of the “very painful” decisions to cut staff. But the Government would do everything possible to find new work for anyone forced to leave their jobs under the emergency measures.
The Trade Secretary announced that the Queen had agreed in principle to a name change back from Consignia to include Royal Mail.
As he cleared away the Consignia-branded coffee cups from his desk yesterday, Allan Leighton took at least one small step in the restructuring of the Post Office.
The chairman’s decision to change Consignia’s name back to the historic, and popular, Royal Mail is likely to be by far the easiest step. The detritus of the previous rebranding – involving everything from china mugs to corporation chocolates – will cost little more than Pounds 1m to replace.
The French post office (La Poste) will see a third of its turnover exposed to competition on January 1 2003 when the dispatch of postal items weighing more than 100g is liberalised within the European Union. Then, when the second stage of the EU postal-sector liberalisation programme begins in 2006 with its extension to items of 50g and over, La Poste will lose its monopoly on Business-to-Customer (B-to-C) postal services – its core activity.
Read MoreConsignia found itself at odds with regulator Postcomm last night after publishing comparisons of its delivery times and costs with those elsewhere in Europe.
The company soon to be known as Royal Mail is in the process of negotiating a 1p rise in first and second class postal charges in an attempt to secure a much-needed pounds 170m-a-year boost in revenue.
Stamp prices have fallen in real terms over the last five years and are said by the company to be among the lowest in Europe. But Postcomm yesterday accused Consignia of failing to compare like with like when it suggested that next-day delivery costs in Germany, for instance, amounted to 101p compared with 27p in the UK.
Japan’s Postal Services Agency chief Hiroshi Matsui on Friday expressed the agency’s eagerness to tie up with U.S. and European firms in the field of international express delivery services.
Some Western firms have made tie-up approaches to the agency, and information and opinions are now being exchanged, although nothing specific has been decided yet, Matsui said.
The Japanese agency currently offers express delivery services for documents and articles for 117 countries and regions.
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