Japan aims to put together a basic plan for the privatization of its postal service by autumn next year, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said, citing Minister of Economy and Financial Services Heizo Takenaka.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi yesterday urged Takenaka to see that a basic policy regarding the postal agency privatization is drawn up, Nikkei said.
Read MoreSiemens Diematic, the logistics technology division of engineering giant Siemens, said Tuesday it has won a USD127 million (€113 million) contract to supply letter sorting technology to the US Postal Service (USPS).
The contract covers the supply of an automated tray handling system to complement the sorting machines already supplied by Diematic to USPS, Siemens said in a statement.
Read MoreLondon faces severe disruption as union leaders prepare tomorrow to announce the dates for strikes involving almost 30,000 workers. The capital is being threatened by a wave of strikes that could disrupt education, council services, the Heathrow Express rail service as well as the post. At issue in most of the disputes, including the postal action, is the weighting allowance that is supposed to compensate for the high cost of living in the capital. The sharp rise in London house prices in recent years has fuelled discontent about the level of weighting allowances, with claims that many workers are in real terms poorer than colleagues doing the same job elsewhere in the country. London postal workers belonging to the Communication Workers’ Union voted overwhelmingly for strike action over weighting last week. The union wants a rise to £4,000 throughout the payment area, which includes Greater London and parts of the Home Counties.
Read MoreSea freight squeezes Panalpina’s profit
Read MoreDutch global parcel delivery company TNT Express is looking at ‘all the options’ to replace Airborne as its ground delivery partner for great swathes of the US.
Airborne’s ground hub-to-door network now belongs to rival DHL, itself part of the Deutsche Post logistics and express parcel empire.
Read MoreChina has for the first time granted the rights for distributing publications to a private domestic company, providing a new channel for private capital to enter the hitherto state-controlled publications sector.
It identified the private firm as Guangzhou-based Wende Guangyun Media Distribution Group, with a registered capital of 50 mln yuan.
Read MoreDeutsche Post World Net CEO Klaus Zumwinkel likes to point out to visitors that he can see no fewer than three ancient castles from his office atop the company’s ultramodern new headquarters in Bonn. But when it comes to reach and influence, the old German barons had nothing on Zumwinkel.
Other German business titans, such as Ron Sommer of Deutsche Telekom or Henning Schulte-Noelle of insurer Allianz, were ousted after their grand strategies went awry. Zumwinkel is still unassailable after 13 years at the top of Deutsche Post, the German postal service. The company is still majority owned by the government and still delivers the mail, but under Zumwinkel, it also has become a profitable, publicly listed multinational with annual sales of $46 billion and the largest express-delivery business in Europe and Asia. “We want to be the leading logistics company in the world,” declares Zumwinkel, who also sits on the supervisory boards of Deutsche Telekom and Lufthansa, and who counts German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder among his friends.
Read MoreJapan Post’s furusato hometown parcel service, which sells and distributes specialty goods particular to various regions of the nation, is gradually being introduced in other parts of Asia.
The postal services corporation, which is looking to increase the amount of overseas business its Express Mail Service handles, has already inked deals with counterparts in South Korea and China, and intends to expand further into Asia.
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