Author: Archive

Royal Mail eyes last-gasp talks

Posted by | Jun 17, 2007 | |

Royal Mail has written to conciliation service Acas, offering to meet the Communication Workers Union (CWU) ahead of a proposed strike. The company insisted it was not making any concessions, but was seeking to again explain its position.

Last week Royal Mail insisted that the organisation could not afford to improve its 2.5% pay offer, despite staff voting for strike action.

The CWU is due to set dates for a series of national walkouts.

“Royal Mail is contacting Acas, not to make any concessions in our position, but to try to explain to the union once again the very serious challenges the business now faces in an open, competitive market,” a spokesman said.

The CWU has said the strikes will go ahead unless a breakthrough is reached.

However both sides have said they are keen for fresh talks.

If a nationwide postal strike does go ahead, it would be the first since 1996.

About 77% of Royal Mail’s CWU members who took part in a ballot voted for the strike action, on a turnout of 60%.

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Royal Mail flogs 75,000 'lost in the post' items

Posted by | Jun 17, 2007 | |

Royal Mail has admitted selling off thousands of items that got ‘lost in the post’ to help meet its running costs. The troubled company sells the contents of about 75,000 undelivered packages every year, at the risk of enraging hordes of customers already frustrated that their post has gone astray.

Even customers who paid over the odds for premium ‘secure’ services to cover valuable items have been shocked to find their goods put up for auction, in an operation that could be netting the postal giant millions of pounds a year.
The scandal was exposed by retired teacher John Beattie after he discovered that a set of antique bagpipes, which Royal Mail had lost, were for sale on internet auction site eBay.
Royal Mail spokeswoman admitted: “About 500,000 undeliverable parcels are sent to Royal Mail’s return letter centre every year.
“They are kept for up to six months, after which a proportion – about 15 per cent – is sent to auction, with the proceeds making a contribution to the centre’s annual GBP 10million running costs.”
She said some of the money was given to charity, but would not disclose how much.

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U.S. New homeowners decry cluster boxes

Posted by | Jun 17, 2007 | |

Across the nation, the U.S. Postal Service increasingly is delivering mail to communal cluster boxes as a way to keep pace with booming residential growth while controlling labor costs. The new strategy, aimed at new developments in fast-growing areas such as Clarksburg, Leesburg and Waldorf, saves the postal service time and money.

“Instead of going from door to door, from lawn to lawn, from driveway to driveway, we have a central location,” said Luvenia Hyson, a postal service regional spokeswoman.

But many residents and developers say cluster boxes, traditionally reserved for apartments and townhouses, not single-family homes, are impersonal, inconvenient and downright ugly.

The communal delivery system’s detractors include the National Association of Home Builders, which is lobbying against it. A.J. Holliday, a lawyer for the Washington-based interest group, called the new postal strategy “discrimination” against people buying new homes.

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New FedEx distribution center

Posted by | Jun 16, 2007 | |

The South Brunswick Planning Board approved what will soon become a new Federal Express distribution center last week.

The owner of the property, Matrix Development Group, will now begin construction on a 213,000-square-foot distribution center for the delivery company. Currently, the property is the site of a small office building that will be demolished when the tenant’s lease runs out in 2011, which will prompt Phase II of the development, adding 52,000 additional square feet of space.

An application for a 407,400-square-foot warehouse on the tract was approved in July. The plan proposed last week will shrink the already approved warehouse by almost 200,000 square feet to meet FedEx’s needs.

A principal with Matrix, Kenneth Griffin, said that after approval, the company began seeking tenants for the building and eventually struck a deal with FedEx. The delivery company needed a new distribution facility, which has different design needs than an ordinary warehouse, and plans for a new application were created. Griffin said the location was ideal for the company due to its proximity of Exit 8A on the New Jersey Turnpike.

In the first phase, the facility will employ 344 people, 111 of which will be van drivers. The second phase will bring 183 extra employees. The building will use porous pavement in a little less than 10 percent of its employee parking lot in order to control stormwater.

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Ciblex France doubles its capacity in the East of France

Posted by | Jun 16, 2007 | |

Ciblex, opened its new office near Strasbourg in Illkirch Graffenstaden in the Bas Rhin on 15 June 2007.

This new venture strengthens the CIBLEX network and corresponds to its strategy of expanding its network with a view to consolidating its unique offer of next day delivery right across France early in the morning – before 8am, before 9am, before 10am and before 12 noon.

Ciblex has been present in the East of France for over 20 years and has built up very strong partner relationships with players such as DUTSCHER, VENTANA, Clinique de l’Instrument and AKE.

This new modernly designed office ensures the collection and delivery of parcels and documents in the 67 (Bas Rhin), 68 (Haut Rhin), 70 (Haute Saône) and 90 (Territoire de Belfort) departments. It carries out transit operations in the main North East European route and particularly to and from Germany. It also accommodates the sales team who are consolidating their position in these sectors in order to strengthen the client relationship based on regional proximity.

This office deals with up to 10,000 parcels per day throughout France and internationally. This doubled capacity will allow Ciblex to take on the steady growth of national and international volume while improving the time taken to process letters and parcels.

The site accommodates 1300 m2 of warehousing and 200 m2 of offices. 15 docks have been equipped to receive the light vehicles and lorries dedicated to transporting the goods. Since the proportion of light vehicles is greater than that of lorries, this gives CIBLEX the flexibility to deliver early in the morning while respecting the new 90 km/h regulation.

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Economic policy: Japan Post aims at further aggrandisement

Posted by | Jun 16, 2007 | |

The crowning economic achievement of Mr Koizumi’s premiership was his enactment of legislation to privatise Japan’s vast postal empire. According to that law, in October Japan Post will be reorganised as a holding company with a delivery system, an insurance company and a savings bank as discrete subsidiaries. Over time those financial companies will be privatised and forced to compete with private enterprises. The legislation, however, embodies several potentially serious flaws. It lacks, for instance, stipulations that would prevent the three separate companies from continuing to co-operate intimately; to the contrary, they would ultimately be permitted to buy shares in each other and therefore to reconstruct much of the financial and corporate structure that has historically bound them together. In addition, the law states that the government guarantee of the insurance and banking companies’ products will not be phased out for many years to come. Hence, the companies will still enjoy a competitive and financial advantage over private insurers and banks.

Equally problematic are provisions that will allow the mail and package delivery service to expand into other businesses in order to render more of the country’s 24,000 local offices profitable. This was certainly what the new president of Japan Post, Yoshifumi Nishikawa, had in mind when he announced in April that the branches of his empire would soon start selling mortgages to retail customers. Given that he and his colleagues do not have experience in financial services, he said, they might seek the assistance of that equally dirigiste agency, the HFA. Mr Nishikawa also intends to transform the five- and six-storey main post offices in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya into skyscrapers of which the floor space can be rented as stores and offices. The ostensibly shrinking postal empire will thus expand into real estate, mortgage lending and perhaps other industries.

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TNT Green Approach Wins RBS Recognition

Posted by | Jun 15, 2007 | |

TNT Financial Services – the specialist division of the company serving the UK’s financial services sector – won acclaim when it was singled out to take the ‘Corporate Responsibility Award’ from The Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) at the Bank’s 2007 Supplier Excellence Awards.

TNT was praised for its commitment to continually challenging the environmental benefits that the company delivers under its ongoing commercial partnership with RBS. This included reducing the number of miles covered by its vehicles while serving the RBS distribution network throughout the UK, the subsequent reduction of its ‘carbon footprint’ along with unique initiatives such as piloting the world’s first ever environmentally-friendly, battery powered, high performance zero emissions 7.5 tonne vehicle.

The awards follow TNT’s success as the sole distributor of cheques, internal mail, stationery and marketing materials for a number of RBS brands including NatWest, Coutts, Direct Line, Lombard, Churchill, One Account and Tesco Personal Finance.

Mail items are collected via eight TNT collection depots across the UK and then transported to TNT’s sortation centre in Lount, Leicestershire before being conveyed to 27 strategically located TNT depots across the country in readiness for delivery.

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FirstGBRf extends Royal Mail contract to move mail by rail until 2010

Posted by | Jun 15, 2007 | |

FirstGroup-owned rail freight company FirstGBRf said it has extended its contract with Royal Mail to transport post until 2010.

The deal will see the freight haulier move more than 1 mln items a day on two return services between Willesden in London, Warrington and Wishaw in Scotland.

FirstGBR started carrying post for Royal Mail at the end of 2004, marking a return to the railways for the postal service following the end of its contract with previous postal train operator English, Welsh & Scottish Railway due to a disagreement over costs.

FirstGBRf did not disclose the value of the contract.

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