Author: Archive

Japan's 1st Post Office inside Convenience Store Opens

Posted by | Sep 3, 2007 | |

A post office started business on the premises of a southern Japan outlet of convenience store chain Lawson Inc. on Monday, becoming Japan’s first post office to operate inside a convenience store.

There are already convenience stores that offer services inside post offices, but the opposite case is the first in the country.

The Lawson store in Kitakyushu, in the southern Japan prefecture of Fukuoka, has no partition separating it from the post office, allowing customers to go back and forth between them without stepping out of the building.

Speaking at an opening ceremony, Yoshikazu Kurita, the head of Japan Post’s branch for the Kyushu southern Japan region, said Japan Post will continue to pursue similar partnerships with Lawson in order to provide more convenience to customers.

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Emirates Post portal offers diverse online services

Posted by | Sep 3, 2007 | |

Emirates Post has announced that its portal (www.emiratespost.ae) has been enhanced to offer a wide range of postal and non-postal services, backed by a secure online payment system.

After registering online, people can pay DEWA & SEWA bills, Sharjah Traffic Police and Sharjah Municipality fines, track parcels and registered items, calculate postal tariffs, reserve, renew and pay for P.O. Boxes and view list of approved applicants for Sheikh Zayed Housing Program, among other different services.

The portal also allows people to create their own utility bill management system online by registering with eP.O. Box which enables people can select the bills they want to pay online and get updates on latest transactions, due date, bill information and notification of incoming registered mail.

“As the whole country moves towards eGovernment, Emirates Post wants to be at the forefront of the e-Transformation that is taking place nationwide,” said Abdulla Al Daboos, Director General of Emirates Post. “The portal enables users to pay online for different services from the comfort of their home or office, or from anywhere in the world. We have plans to add more advanced integrated services in the near future.” The Emirates Post website features extensive information on all services provided by the postal corporation, including Degree Verification System, eDirham cards, International Driving Permits, Remittances, Parcel Service, information about subsidiaries and latest news from Emirates Post.

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New Fuji photo printing kiosks

Posted by | Sep 3, 2007 | |

In the old days (i.e. when we were still using 35mm film to take photographs), you had to go to the neighbourhood photo-processing store, hand over your 35mm film negatives and they’ll print them out for you.

While the excitement (and anxiety) of waiting for your prints to come back have diminished somewhat with the advent of digital photography, FujiFilm (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd hopes to inject some of the magic back into making trips to photo printing stores with its new Fujifilm Digital Kiosk (FDK) 7000 series photo processing kiosks.

Available now in Fujifilm Digital Imaging (FDi) stores across the country, the FDK 7000 allows users to make photographic prints from all sorts of digital media, be it Flash memory cards (such as CompactFlash, SD, xD and Memory Stick), customer-made CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, USB thumbdrives and even mobile phones (via Bluetooth).

Once your photos are loaded onto the kiosk, you’ll be able to choose between a wide variety of print and formatting options — apart from printing regular photos, you can add colourful borders, create photo montages, create pocket calendars and even invitation cards.

And if you need to back up your photos, you can burn them onto a CD-R or DVD-R through the kiosk’s optical drive.

The FDK 7000 comes in two variants: A special model with a built-in thermal dye-sublimation printer (the FDK 7000i) and a regular model without the printer.

The printer-equipped FDK 7000i is designed for making instant prints, taking only eight seconds to print a 4R photo.

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South Africa Post Office gets its house in order

Posted by | Sep 2, 2007 | |

The SA Post Office is slowly picking up the pieces after a year filled with controversy.

New chairman Vuyo Mahlati said this week that the Post Office was in the process of a major overhaul, from corporate culture to tender processes and a “brand recovery”.

It will also spend R800-million to R900-million a year on infrastructure investment.

Through a geographical information system, the Post Office is giving rural citizens postal addresses for the first time. According to the 2001 census, SA had 11.2 million households. Of these, only 4.1 million had street addresses, giving 63% of households no addresses.

The Post Office is recovering from a period of intense controversy following the suspension and later firing of former chief executive Khutso Mampeule, his criminal proceedings against his predecessor, Maanda Manyatshe, and a government-initiated forensic audit implicating a number of people in top positions at the parastatal. This includes the current acting CEO, Motshoanetsi Lesoka, and acting chief financial officer Nick Buick.

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Deutsche Post mulling free newspaper launch

Posted by | Sep 2, 2007 | |

German mail and logistics group Deutsche Post is planning to launch a free newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) said.

A Deutsche Post spokesman told Reuters on Sunday that such a freesheet would be “a legitimate idea” but that “there are no concrete plans at present.”

The European Union wants to liberalize the postal services market in the 27-nation bloc from 2009 and Deutsche Post is under pressure to find new sources of revenue as its national monopoly on letter deliveries ends.

The German government plans to end its last remaining monopoly — delivering letters under 50 grams — from the start of 2008.

The FAS said Deutsche Post could launch a free newspaper soon.

Earlier attempts to launch free newspapers in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, have met with stiff opposition from the country’s established newspaper publishers.

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MRW opens five new outlets in Spain

Posted by | Sep 2, 2007 | |

Spanish domestic express carrier MRW has opened another five new franchises in the country, as it continues its wave of expansion.

The new outlets are one each in Pontevedra, Madrid and Avila, and two in Huelva, bringing its total number of branches to 783 in Spain, Gibraltar and Andorra, and also Portugal.

Its new franchise in Madrid, at Villanueva de la Cañada on the western outskirts of the city, brings to 79 the number of MRW outlets in the Madrid region, 44 of which are in the centre of the capital.

Earlier this summer, the company announced the opening of a new EUR 17 million hub in Barcelona and new platforms in San Sebastian and Granada.

MRW is one of Spain’s fastest-growing couriers, with over 10,000 staff, 5,000 vehicles and three aircraft. Last year revenues grew 9 pct to EUR 564 million.

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Hunt for new Royal Mail boss called off

Posted by | Sep 2, 2007 | |

The search for a successor to Allan Leighton, the chairman of Royal Mail, has been abandoned by the Government.

Allan Leighton’s term as chairman of Royal Mail ends next March;

The move follows attempts to persuade a number of high-profile businessmen to accept the job.

Whitehall sources insisted the decision had nothing to do with the failure to find a replacement. Instead, they said, the priority had been to strengthen the board in other ways, such as through the appointment of non-executive directors, and added that the search could be resurrected.

The Government first advertised for the position of deputy chairman last autumn in what was widely seen as a precursor to appointing a successor to Leighton. However, approaches to several businessmen, including Sir Philip Hampton, the chairman of J Sainsbury, and Sir John Parker, the chairman of National Grid, failed. Hampton was widely seen as the frontrunner but it is believed he rejected the offer as the Government refused to commit itself to a full privatization of the organization. Leighton’s term ends next March and it is believed he would be happy to stay on for a third term.

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Reliance Money partners Western Union

Posted by | Sep 2, 2007 | |

Reliance Money, part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, on Saturday announced its new brand TRavelmate Services, combining the company’s money transfer business in association with Western Union.

The Director and CEO of Reliance Money, Sudip Bandyopadhyay, told reporters that “India is the single largest recipient of global remittances of USD 27 billion annually, more than ten per cent share of the total global remittances estimated at USD 240 billion. This is continuously increasing due to labour migration and increasing wages in most countries where Indians work”.

Reliance Money transfer business currently handled close to one lakh transactions a month with a daily inward remittance equal to USD 1.4 million, he said. The forex and currency exchange business in India was around USD 7 billion annually and growing at a CAGR of 20 per cent and Travelmate Services expected to garner a good share in the next two years.

In addition to its outlets in 800 cities and towns, plans were on for opening 10,000 standalone kiosks reaching the Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns. “In money transfer, we are now second after Indian Posts and may overtake them in two or three years,” he added. Christina Gold, President and Worldwide CEO of the USD 4.5 billion Western Union, said their association with Reliance was from 1993 and India was a large and growing market for remittances from overseas.

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