Kamlesh Chand, Deputy Director General (personnel), launched the second phase of `Project Arrow’ here on Saturday. Three post offices (Kanpur GPO, Nawabganj and Cantt) were selected for modernisation and computerisation.
Read MorePalletFORCE has announced the construction of a new state-of-the-art hub, which it claims will be a flagship for the sector.
The new hub – which will go live by the end of 2008 – will be located in Burton upon Trent. Its single warehouse has been developed to deliver a bespoke environment offering faster throughputs and higher quality of operation.
“Designed to PalletFORCE’s specifications, the hub is squarer in design than conventional warehouses to suit its specific mode of operation, and will allow a quicker turnaround of vehicles With a size of 365,000 sq ft – compared to PalletFORCE’s existing premises capacity of 210,000 sq ft – increased capacity of up to 50pct is anticipated,” says Carl Worgan, Operations Director.
“PalletFORCE has grown rapidly since our launch in 2001, from 500 pallets per night to around 7,000,” explains Neil Carpenter, PalletFORCE’s Commercial and Finance Director. “We have taken on new warehouses as demand has increased and made the most out of these premises, but there is a limit to what can be achieved with the existing arrangements as the buildings were created originally as aircraft hangars!”
Work on the building is anticipated to start in February, with operations scheduled to begin before the end of the year.
Read MorePeter Louden Interview
Read MoreDeutsche Post is reportedly in talks with FedEx over a partnership with DHL Express designed to reduce its heavy losses in the USA. The report, which follows news of the planned EUR 600m writedown of US assets, has not been confirmed.
The Financial Times Deutschland reported today that DPWN executives want FedEx to take over DHL Express’ domestic US operations. In exchange, DHL Express would provide services in Europe for FedEx. Talks are taking place with FedEx chairman Fred Smith, the newspaper said, citing sources close to the company. DPWN CFO John Allan told the newspaper: “We have several options.”
News agencies cited DPWN spokespersons as saying that no decisions have yet been made about the future of the US express business. Talks with FedEx were not confirmed.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s online website cited Allan on Friday as saying that it was “ very, very unlikely” that the domestic US business would be given up due to the strategic importance of the market. The priority was to reduce the US losses “as quickly as possible and very substantially”. But this did not necessarily mean having to make a profit in the USA since a substantial amount of international business was generated there, he noted.
Influential analysts recently called on DPWN to downscale its US express operations significantly to reduce long-running heavy losses. Last November, due to the increasing impact of the slowing US economy, DPWN scrapped the target of achieving a breakeven in the USA by 2009.
Read MoreA DHL spokesman says parent company Deutsche Post World Net has no plans to sell its U.S. Express delivery service to its Memphis-based rival FedEx Corp.
“There is no question about our exiting the U.S. business, a withdrawal can be completely ruled out,” DHL spokesman Jonathan Baker said in a phone interview with Memphis Business Journal, a Courier sister paper, Friday morning.
Baker said he’d been fielding calls from news media across the country after a story about a possible deal appeared in Financial Times Deutschland, a German business newspaper, Friday morning.
That report said Deutsche Post World Net was in talks with FedEx founder, chairman, president and CEO Frederick Smith about the possibility of a buyout or a partnership.
In return, Deutsche Post World Net would give FedEx a larger presence in the European market, according to the report.
DHL is the main customer for ABX Air, based in Wilmington. DHL has spent billions of dollars to build up its domestic presence. Nonetheless, U.S. operations lost USD 900 million last year and analysts don’t foresee a profit this year.
The company has said it will take an USD 874 million writedown of the value of its struggling DHL Express business in the Americas. Baker said that move was more about accounting than sales and said DHL’s problems were industrywide.
“Just like everyone else, (our problems) are a result of economic conditions that have affected the industry as a whole,” he said. “We’re continuing improvement in our U.S. business and are dedicated to serving our customers.”
Read MoreThe minimum wage in the German postal-services industry and plans to maintain a sales tax exemption for Deutsche Post AG will help the company ‘cement’ its monopoly, the head of the German Cartel Office told Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Imposing a minimum wage on the industry was a ‘regulatory sin’ and plans to only grant a sales tax exemption for postal services to companies that provide country-wide services will subdue burgeoning rivals, German antitrust regulator Bernhard Heitzer said in an interview with the newspaper.
‘We shouldn’t make the same mistakes that were made in the energy industry, where the market was liberalised without providing for the right competitive framework,’ Heitzer said.
Read MoreDeutsche Post AG rose as much as 5.9 percent in German trading after Financial Times Deutschland said it may sell the unprofitable U.S. package and express-delivery unit to FedEx Corp.
Deutsche Post shares advanced as much as 1.27 euros to 22.70 euros and were up 3.9 percent at 12:15 p.m. in Frankfurt.
Bonn-based Deutsche Post may sell the U.S. delivery operation to FedEx and seek a merger partner for the Deutsche Postbank unit later this year, the German financial daily said today, citing unidentified company officials.
Deutsche Post spokeswoman Silje Skogstad declined to comment on plans for the U.S. DHL unit and said the company is evaluating several options to improve earnings. Regarding Deutsche Postbank, she referred to earlier comments by Chief Executive Officer Klaus Zumwinkel, who said the company is currently the lender’s most suitable owner.
“Elimination of these losses will provide a material boost to earnings,” London-based Collins Stewart analyst Andrew Fitchie said in a note to investors. “The clear message from the group is that restructuring is definitely under way, at long last.”
Deutsche Post will write down the value of the DHL Express Americas division by 600 million euros (USD 874 million), the company said Jan. 23. Chief Financial Officer John Allan said yesterday that the company would reveal details of a turnaround plan for the U.S. business in a “small number of months.”
The German company planned for DHL to break even in the Americas by 2009 and scrapped the deadline last year. The postal service bought the business in 2002 to compete with Atlanta-based United Parcel Service Inc. and Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx in their home market.
Read MoreAgility, TNT and UPS, three leading logistics and transport companies, are joining forces to help the humanitarian sector with the logistics of emergency response to large-scale natural disasters. The World Economic Forum has facilitated these initiatives by offering a neutral platform for the development of partnerships between the humanitarian relief sector and member companies.
The first initiative is a set of ten high-level Guiding Principles designed to guide both the private sector and humanitarian community as they work together to provide effective relief to those in need. The second initiative is a unique, pioneering example of collaboration between several companies and the humanitarian relief sector.
The three companies and the United Nations Global Logistics Cluster today on guidelines and conditions for the intervention of joint ‘Logistics Emergency Teams’ (LETs). LETs’ support includes providing logistics specialists (e.g. airport coordination, airport managers and warehouse managers), logistics assets (e.g. warehouses, trucks, forklifts) and transportation services. LETs will intervene for the first three to six weeks following natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, or storms.
The companies stand ready to deploy Logistics Emergency Teams worldwide upon request from the United Nations Global Logistics Cluster. The nature of the request, local situations and the companies’ available resources will dictate the teams’ size and composition. As a general rule, they will serve in countries where member companies already operate, thereby leveraging their knowledge of local constraints. A committee representing the member companies is to answer requests from the Global Logistics Cluster led by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and decide on the deployment of LETs.
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