Tag: Finland

Itella to buy the Swedish Logistics Company PS Logistics AB

Posted by | Jul 11, 2007 | |

Itella is to buy the Swedish logistics company PS Logistics AB. The turnover of the company, located in Borås, is around SEK 80 million. It has 22 employees, whose positions won’t be affected by this deal. The vendor is a holding company owned by the company’s Managing Director Stefan Pettersson and Transekspedicija of Lithuania.

PS Logistics AB provides freight warehousing, storage and contract logistics services. The deal will strengthen the position of Itella Logistics AB in Sweden, particularly in freight bound for the Baltic States and Eastern Europe. The operations of Itella Logistics in Sweden will also be expanded to cover contract logistics.

“The home market of Itella Logistics covers the Baltic area, where we are currently one of the leading logistics companies. Buying PS Logistics will improve our market position in Sweden by strengthening our current business and by introducing new business areas. At the same time, we will strengthen our Baltic operations,” states Joni Sundelin, Vice President, Itella Logistics.

The company will transfer to the ownership of Itella Logistics on 1 August 2007.

In Sweden, the Itella Group currently comprises the transport and freight forwarding company Itella Logistics AB and the information logistics company Itella Information AB.

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Itella: 85 million eLetters sent annually

Posted by | Jul 4, 2007 | |

In Finland, circa 85 million eLetters are sent annually. The users of this service consider the Itella eLetter to be easy to use, inexpensive and reliable. It is, hence, mainly used for sending invoices. The concept, used since the early 1990s in Finland, is also now being exported.

With the help of Itella’s eLetter service, companies send documents, for example invoices, customer bulletins or salary statements, to Itella in electronic format. Itella Information then prints and places the documents in envelopes and sends them, depending on the format that the recipient wants, to their destination either by post in paper format or electronically for example to Itella’s eTransactions service, Netposti. The eLetter service speeds up the flow of information from the sender to the recipient, resulting in the sender’s organisation functioning more efficiently. The routine work processes, such as fulfilment and posting, are carried out by Itella in a data secure manner, and it only remains for the client company to produce the content.

According to the customer satisfaction survey commissioned by Itella Information Oy in May, the users of eLetters are highly satisfied with the service: it is considered easy to use, inexpensive and reliable. 80 pct of the respondents rated the eLetter as “extremely good” or “excellent” for ease of use. 75pct considered the eLetter to be a service that matched their needs well and 76pct were satisfied with the quality of the printing and mailing services.

Almost 70 pct of the companies and organizations surveyed use the eLetter for sending invoices. Of the users of the service, around 50pct send salary statements and circa 25 pct other customer communications, such as bulletins and customer letters.

The objective of the customer satisfaction survey was to chart customer opinion about the eLetter service and to find out about the selection criteria for its use. 120 business customers using the eLetter service took part in the survey and it was conducted via telephone interviews.

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Itella To Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions By 10 Per Cent By 2012

Posted by | Jun 15, 2007 | |

The national postal operators of Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway and Malta are committed to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions by 10 per cent in the next five years. Greenhouse gas emissions, i.e. carbon dioxide, represent 70 per cent of postal operators’ total environmental impact. Half of these CO2 emissions result from the use of road transport. PostEurop, the association of European public postal operators, coordinates the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Programme. Itella, Finland’s largest transport company, plays a major role in the development of pro-environmental logistics. The key goal of Itella’s environmental strategy is to reduce vehicle carbon dioxide emissions caused by the use of fossil traffic fuels. Methods of reducing fuel consumption include efficient route planning, combining transports, and training in ecological driving methods. Alternative fuels tested in use include electricity, natural gas and biodiesel. Energy consumption, recycling and waste management will also be enhanced in buildings while new environment-friendly services are developed, for instance in electronic communications. Itella has had excellent experiences of using biodiesel in test vehicles. As the first Finnish transport company to do so, Itella began the related trials in January 2007. The share of biodiesel has been increased from 10 per cent to 80 percent. Starting next week Itella will experiment with 100 per cent biodiesel. According to research results the production and use of biodiesel causes up to 40 per cent less CO2 emissions than ordinary fuel. Itella’s fleet in Finland comprises over 5,500 vehicles, covering around 100 million kilometres per year. In 2006, Itella’s carbon dioxide emissions totalled 98,000 tonnes in Finland, i.e. some 0.2 per cent of the CO2 emissions of the entire country, resulting from the use of fossil fuels in vehicles and the production of power and heat purchased for use on premises. On average, the delivery of one letter from sender to recipient produces 36 grammes of carbon dioxide, whereas an ordinary passenger car emits the same amount on a 200-metre journey.

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Data Protection Ombudsman weighs risks of postal outsourcing

Posted by | Jun 4, 2007 | |

Most corporate enterprises in Finland have outsourced postal handing services. The Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman believes that outsourcing could include risks related to privacy issues.

More and more often, clients send mail to a company using its corporate address, but the letters are actually opened at the premises of a subcontracted mail processor and forwarded to the recipient in electronic form.

One-fifth of the mail addressed to companies first goes through the hands of a contracted service provider. Two-thirds of outgoing mail from companies does the same.

For example, the Osuuspankki Bank and the Pohjola insurance company have outsourced all of their mail. For Osuuspankki, the bulk of mail consists of client bank account statements, nearly three million of them a month.

The trend towards outsourcing has move so far and so fast that the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman has worries about confidentiality. The level of risks involved will be the subject of a study to be carried out this summer.

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Sweden/EU industry: Post liberalisation…in a big country

Posted by | May 31, 2007 | |

Liberalisation of the postal sector will mark the end of an era across the EU. Making the transition to open markets will prove to be a bloody process for some – at stake are jobs, time-honoured principles such as universal service provision and cherished assets, including post offices, letter-boxes and sorting offices.

But countries such as Sweden, which liberalised in the early 1990s, warn that resistance is futile. Traditional postal service provision is being stretched by the advent of digital technology and e-commerce. The sector, says dominant postal operator Posten AG, can choose to adapt of its own volition or sink.

“Physical post will diminish if postal services don’t adapt and it will be difficult to uphold the universal service obligation in the end,” says Susanne Flyckt, chief officer for regulatory affairs at Posten, formerly a state-backed monopoly.

Sweden is a flag-bearer for the liberalisation cause. A report compiled this year by Sweden’s postal regulator shows that universal service provision, or standards guaranteeing non-discriminatory access to postal services, has not suffered as a result of market opening. “The previously high service- quality of Posten has, as a result of the liberalisation and the growing competition, even improved in terms of quality and efficiency,” says the report.

According to Flyckt, any jobs lost at Posten since market-opening have been “down to technological developments and changes in customer behaviour”. The regulatory report, published in March, shows that the introduction of new techniques, including highly automated sorting centres and the reorganisation of the post office network, in any case, predated liberalisation.

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