Tag: Europe

ANALYSIS: Stapleton stands firm over postal wrangles

Posted by | Jun 3, 2005 | |

Recent weeks have seen bitter complaints levelled at Postcomm by Royal Mail, Postwatch and direct marketers alike. So chairman Nigel Stapleton has a tough job trying to find some middle ground. Sebastian Burford reports

By anyone’s standards, Postcomm chairman Nigel Stapleton has had a turbulent few weeks. After squaring up to discontented direct marketers at the recent pricing in proportion (PIP) summit (PM last week), this week began with accusations from Postwatch. The postal watchdog claimed the regulator’s tardy introduction of a liberalised market has skewered Royal Mail’s performance targets and amounted to deliberate “misleading”.

The week ends with Stapleton in a war of words over Postcomm’s call for a domestic price freeze until 2010, which Royal Mail’s chairman Allan Leighton has called a “blueprint for the service’s inexorable decline”. Meanwhile, the dust has yet to settle on Royal Mail’s non-payment of compensation for missing the performance targets from the last Postcomm review.

When Stapleton took over the Postcomm chair from Graham Corbett in November 2003, could he have predicted such a rough ride?

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Postcomm’s Stapleton blasts ‘laughable’ UK Royal Mail GBP2bn loss claim

Posted by | Jun 3, 2005 | |

Postcomm chairman Nigel Stapleton has dismissed as “laughable” Royal Mail’s claim that its proposed price freeze will slash GBP2bn off the company’s market value. The regulator’s review of price and service regulations for 2006 has ignited the row, by ruling Royal Mail cannot raise prices by more than 3 per cent until 2010. Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton says the document is a “blueprint for Royal Mail’s inexorable decline”. Stapleton has countered by accusing the state-owned company of consistently “crying wolf” at proposals. “It thought the last price control was Draconian, and has outperformed it by nearly 100 per cent in profit terms,” he says.

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Mail Merge

Posted by | Jun 3, 2005 | |

Yolanda Noble, chief executive of Corporate Mailing Matters, argues that reduced international postal costs should come as extremely good news to marketers and the wider business community alike. In order to better understand the level of international mail inefficiency that larger UK corporations could be addressing, Corporate Mailing Matters commissioned research to quantify the situation. Primary research established a model for typical international mailing volumes, and the savings that were being achieved by pioneer users of cross-border mailing consolidation services. That model was then applied to UK companies turning over more than £50 million per annum – a community of some 4,000 corporations across the UK. The findings were revealing. The UK’s top 4,000 companies are losing out on £251 million every year.

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La Poste signs agreement regarding outlets managed by shopkeepers

Posted by | Jun 2, 2005 | |

La Poste, the French postal service operator, has signed an agreement with the association of the French chambers of industry and commerce, the permanent assembly of professional associations and the confederation of tobacco sellers regarding postal outlets that are managed by shopkeepers. The agreement allows shopkeepers to offer most of the services provided by a post office, including the sale of stamps, the dispatching of packages and registered letters and some financial services. Shopkeepers will not be able to set their own prices, but will be paid 250 euros a month for providing these services, compared with 130 euros at present, and will also receive commission of between 3 and 5 per cent on the turnover that they achieve on postal services.

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TPN delivers healthy profits

Posted by | Jun 2, 2005 | |

The Midlands-based Pallet Network has loaded a substantial increase in both turnover and profits for the year to March 31.

Turnover grew from pounds 15.8 million to pounds 20.3 million, an increase of 28 per cent, with pretax profit topping pounds 804,000 as against just over pounds 625,000 the previous year – a jump of just over 28 per cent.

TPN bosses pinpointed significantly increased pallet throughput as a direct result of consistent delivery performance and service quality.

Hailing an ‘excellent year’, Richard Eldred, TPN chairman, said: ‘Average nightly pallet throughput grew by more than 26 per cent a quarter from 2,670 to 3,375 pallets per night during 2004/05, with turnover and profit both highlighting this increase. Increasing pallet traffic was the key factor in our decision to relocate to our new 224,000 sq ft hub near Rugby at the start of 2005, representing an investment of around pounds 6 million over five years.

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