Tag: Europe

People in Retail Awards 2007 – The Winners

Posted by | Oct 5, 2007 | |

Over 600 retailers gathered on Wednesday night to celebrate the 2007 People in Retail Awards, held in association with LaSer UK.

After a glittering champagne reception, comedian Dominic Holland entertained guests with his wry take on the retail industry. Following a sumptuous meal and a lively awards ceremony the crowd danced the night away until the small hours.

Team Player of the Year – Heather McDonald- Lloydspharmacy
Environmentally Friendly Retailer of the Year – ASDA
Support Team of the Year – COMET
Store Manager of the Year North – Diane Brassington ELC
Store Manager of the Year South – Adrian Page – Homebase.
Year – Passion for Perfume – Dundee
Employee of the Year – Claire Barron – Vodafone
Online Customer service team of the year – Figleaves
Customer Initiative of the Year. – Lloydspharmacy
Training and Career Development award. – Homebase.
Frontline customer service team – Coast
Employer of The Year – Vodafone

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Apacs promotes electronic payments amid UK postal strike

Posted by | Oct 5, 2007 | |

Apacs, the UK payments association, is using the current postal strike to promote the wider use of electronic payments as firms suffer from delayed cheques.

Apacs is also encouraging consumers to make wider use of the direct debit scheme for bills.

Sandra Quinn, director of communications at Apacs, said, “The postal strike serves as an effective reminder of the benefit of direct debits. Currently, direct debits are used for 58% of all personal and household bills. They save time and effort and regardless of any external factors you can be confident your bills will be paid on time without any hassle.”

According to Apacs, the number of bill payments made by cheque has fallen by 32% since 2000.

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Business Post – Pre-Close Period Trading Update

Posted by | Oct 4, 2007 | |

Business Post Group plc today issues the following pre-close period trading update for the six months ended 30 September 2007.

Group revenues for the first half of the financial year increased by 9% on the equivalent period last year. As previously announced, the Parcels contract with Federal Express terminated on 30 April 2007. Excluding the revenues from this contract, the underlying revenue increase was 15%.

Excluding revenues from FedEx, parcel revenues are in line with last year. Good growth in the B2B market has been offset by a decline in B2C. As we have previously indicated, the B2C parcels market is becoming increasingly competitive, which is impacting Parcels margin growth in the current year.

Our mail business, UK Mail, continues to achieve strong growth with revenues in the period up by some 60% on last year. We continue to win a significant number of substantial contracts.

Revenues in Specialist Services are broadly in line with last year.

Interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2007 will be announced on 14 November 2007.

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CPL – Aramex plans more acquisitions

Posted by | Oct 4, 2007 | |

Aramex plans to continue buying freight companies in key markets around the world to build up its global network, Osama Fatalleh, senior vice president and chief strategic officer, told the CPL Summit in Barcelona this week.

The Middle East-based freight logistics company wants to become the world’s fifth-largest express player through a mix of subsidiaries, alliance partners and franchises. “Our industry cannot continue to be controlled by four companies on a global scale,” Fatelleh said.

Over the last few years, Aramex had built up a worldwide network through this mixed approach but continued to face the challenge of having partners acquired by one of the big four players, Fatelleh said. In response, Aramex had decided to move from a cooperation model to a financial holding strategy in key markets such as the US, Asia and Central Europe, he said.

At the same time, Aramex was broadening its product portfolio into freight. In future, it was likely to buy freight companies and then widen them with express services since there were now few attractive express companies left to buy, he commented. Aramex also planned to open up its network to smaller local or regional players to give them more opportunity to compete with the big four integrators, he added.

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Business Post extends share of UK postal market

Posted by | Oct 4, 2007 | |

Guy Buswell, chief executive of Business Post, the private parcel and mail delivery group, said the postal strike beginning on Thursday could endanger the future of the mail industry if the dispute was not resolved soon.

During the strike, he said, the 6m to 8m pieces of mail which Business Post’s UK Mail subsidiary collects every night would continue to be delivered into Royal Mail depots and wait there for final delivery once the postmen and women were back at work.

Mr Buswell also said the group’s parcels business had seen a sudden slump in deliveries to consumers in the days following the Northern Rock crisis. He said there had been “a huge reduction in volumes” of parcel deliveries from companies which sell electronic goods, such as computers, over the internet.

He said the business had picked up again since, but that it showed that consumer confidence could be hit by such events.

In a trading update covering the group’s half year to the end of September, the group said the UK Mail business “continues to achieve strong growth with revenues in the period up by some 60 per cent.” The mail market in the UK was fully opened to competition in 2006 and UK Mail now has a 7½ per cent market share.

Group revenues in the half year were affected by the loss of a contract with Federal Express. That contract, worth GBP 20m a year in revenues and GBP 2m in operating profits, ended on April 30 after FedEx acquired a UK parcels business.

Mr Buswell said that the group was having success in winning new contracts, however, the loss of the FedEx contract meant that group revenues had increased in the first half by 9 per cent rather than an underlying 15 per cent.

Revenues from the group’s parcels operation were in-line with the same period of last year, as “good growth” in the business-to-business parcels operation had been offset by a decline in deliveries to consumers.

The group’s shares, which have fallen from around 480p in recent weeks ahead of the postal strike, slipped another 6p to 394p in morning trading.

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