Tag: Europe

Postal service given two-year extension to fix up its act

Posted by | Oct 4, 2007 | |

The Cyprus Postal Service could face EU fines reaching the millions if it doesn’t get its act together, Telecommunications Regulator Vasos Pyrgos has warned.

In its 2005 report, the Office of the Commissioner of Electronic Communications and Postal Regulation (OCECPR) said that while there is sufficient competition in postal services, mainly due to express courier services, the government service has failed to meet requisite quality levels.

In 2004, the OCECPR fined the postal service GBP 10,000 for delays in delivering letters; in 2005 the fine was GBP 20,000, and in 2006 it reached GBP 50,000.

Officials claim that Cyprus has fallen short of EU delivery targets because it is the only country in the EU where the postal services are not permitted to take independent decisions to upgrade their department.

Brussels has given Cyprus and Malta a two-year extension (2013) to open up their postal services sectors, but Pyrgos said that drastic steps were needed if the Cyprus Postal Service was to become competitive by that deadline.

Lack of flexibility and poor efficiency are said to be the post’s chronic weaknesses, with some saying that key managerial and operational posts are left vacant.

Parliament has drafted a bill proposing to make the postal service a semi-governmental organization that will be able to run its own day-to-day affairs. But any sweeping changes to the regime are almost sure to provoke reaction from civil servants.

The Cyprus Postal Service still has a virtual monopoly on the market. As a state service, it is obliged to provide services to remote and hard-to-reach regions that may even be unprofitable to serve.

However, if it is able to prove that by providing service to hard-to-reach areas it runs a loss, then it will be eligible for reimbursement from a special fund.

Moreover, current regulations give the government service an edge over private couriers.

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Postcomm welcomes appointment of Ulf Dahlsten as commissioner

Posted by | Oct 4, 2007 | |

The Secretary of State for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has confirmed the appointment of Ulf Dahlsten as a commissioner at Postcomm for a three year term with effect from 1 January 2008.

Ulf Dahlsten replaces Simone Bos who stood down as a Commissioner on 30 September 2007 at the end of her term of appointment.

For the past three years Ulf Dahlsten has been a director DG INFSO at the European Commission in Brussels. Earlier in his career he served as chief executive of Sweden Post as well as Chairman of the holding company of TNT Express Worldwide at a time when the market in Sweden was being fully opened to competition. He has also first-hand experience of the deregulations of the railways, taxi and telecom markets in Sweden.

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The Association of Pallet Networks

Posted by | Oct 4, 2007 | |

In the UK, the pallet service providers will be represented by their own dedicated industry body–the Association of Pallet Networks (APN, www.eyefortransport.com).

Formed at the end of last year, the APN has attracted membership from eight pallet networks in the UK: Palletforce, Palletways, Pall-Ex, Fortec, Palletline, United Pallet Network, Palletrack and The Pallet Network.

Together, these members represent more than 620 haulers, 24,000 vehicles and 11 million square feet of warehouse space.

The APN aims to raise awareness of the pallet network sector and to represent the interests of its members in the transport sector with media and government.

It provides a platform for discussion, analysis and the promotion of the pallet network sector to customers, prospective customers, network members and the public sector.

The APN has appointed logistics consultants to set up a detailed study of the sector, using on-line benchmarking to collect and collate information across the sector.

One of the first commercial tasks of the new body was to represent its members on the Countdown Forum for the 2012 Olympic Games, where it presented a detailed analysis of the advantages of using the pallet network approach to support the logistics of the Olympic Games.

Pallet networks are essentially co-operative organizations made up of groups of individual haulers who collect and deliver palletized freight in their own geographical area, consolidating loads destined for other parts of the country and Europe and trunking to a central hub for onward distribution. This significantly increases average vehicle fill, which, for pallet networks, is around 73%, compared with a national average of 51%.

Source: Newsdesk of www.eyefortransport.com

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3.2 Million Germans vote for their mail carrier of the year

Posted by | Oct 4, 2007 | |

Often they do more than just delivering letters and parcels: mail carriers catch thieves, free people locked in a boiler room, and save the day when holidays are at stake. Customers appreciate this level of commitment: 3.2 million German citizens took part in the “Vote for your favorite mail carrier” campaign as Deutsche Post searched for the 1,000 most favorite mail carriers of the year.

“The campaign was an enormous success,” says Jürgen Gerdes, Board Member for MAIL and PARCELS Germany of Deutsche Post World Net. “The positive feedback was overwhelming.” From July 2 to August 31, 2007 customers were able to register their vote for their Mail Carrier of the Year either by sending in a postcard or online. From amongst all the entries received the company is giving away 1,350 valuable prizes, including 50 Smart for two cars. The winners will receive a written notification in October. The 1,000 mail carriers who received the most votes in their delivery districts will receive an award from the Deutsche Post Board of Management on October 27, 2007, in Berlin.

The high response rate shows just how good the image of the 80,000 mail carriers at Deutsche Post really is all over Germany. In sparsely populated, remote areas participation was particularly high: In Hemmoor, Lower Saxony, for example, 97.1 percent of households took part in the campaign. In larger cities mail carriers have a broad fan base, too, with responses particularly high in Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Augsburg, Giessen, Kiel, and Karlsruhe.

Many members of the public took the opportunity to relate highly personal and, in some cases, spectacular tales about “their” mail carrier. One such example is Petra S. from Bexbach who thanked her mail carrier for ensuring that her trip to Australia started off on the right note. He learnt from talking to her that she was expecting important travel documents and kept an eye out for the long awaited envelope at his mail office. On the day of her flight the documents finally arrived. The mail carrier immediately took them to Petra S. – with just two hours to spare before she was due to depart. “That really was last-minute,” the happy customer wrote, who was only too willing to give the helpful mail carrier her vote.

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