Tag: International

Competition heats up in the Asian small-parcel market

Posted by | Jan 17, 2008 | |

Supply chain professionals being tasked with establishing or managing small parcel networks in Asia report being pleasantly surprised by the coverage and competition from the major parcel carriers. That said, there are some major differences between managing a small parcel logistics networks in Seattle and Shanghai.

Tom Stanton, international supply chain analyst at consulting group AFMS in Portland, Ore. says the three major parcel carriers—UPS, FedEx and DHL—are all investing heavily in the Asian markets, particularly China. He says the three are competing for reputation and market share in Asia just as fiercely as they do in the U.S., but from perhaps different positions.

Stanton says DHL has been in Asia the longest and the company claims to have as much as 38 pct of the market and combined the big three hold about two-thirds of the market. All are investing and growing dramatically in Asia. UPS is building a new hub at Shanghai’s international airport. UPS reported more than 20 pct overall business growth in China in the third quarter of 2007, with intra-Asia trade representing the fastest growth.

FedEx aims to begin operations at a USD 150 million hub in the southern city of Guangzhou in December 2008.

Most recently, DHL announced in November it was spending USD 175 million to build its North Asia Hub in Shanghai at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport, due to open in the second half of 2010. The hub will be DHL’s sixth in Asia, and will be able to handle as many as 20,000 parcels and 20,000 documents an hour, the company said.

In a Bloomberg interview, Jerry Hsu, DHL’s president of Greater China, said DHL may form a domestic air-cargo venture with a local carrier. The company has held talks with a number of airlines and drawn up a shortlist based on their hubs and gateways, he added.

Beyond the three major small package players, TNT Logistics and APL Logistics may be the only other names recognizable to U.S.-based supply chain managers. The rest of the market is filled in by local and regional Asian firms covering short shipments between factories or businesses.

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TNT has Triodos-led consortium build 'Green Offices' (NED)

Posted by | Jan 17, 2008 | |

TNT NV said it has chosen Triodos Group and OVG Projectontwikkeling to work together on the development of new sustainable office real estate, as part of TNT’s Planet Me programme.

TNT said 70,000 square meters will be developed into sustainable offices, with TNT’s headquarters in Hoofdorp to be the first of many ‘Green Offices’ to be built in The Netherlands. The Hoofdorp office is expected to be operational in 2010.

The sustainable nature of the office will lie in the lower rent TNT will charge, the fact that it will be CO2 emmission-free, and the long term guarantees the consortium will give over the sustainability of the offices.

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GO! Express & Logistics opens high-performance hub in Central Germany

Posted by | Jan 17, 2008 | |

GO! opens new hub in Niederaula German express company GO! Express & Logistics has opened a new EUR 7 million sorting centre in Niederaula, Central Germany. After eight months of construction, the new hub was put into operation in the night from 11 to 12 January 2008.

The hub is due to the positive development of parcel volumes with continuous double-digit growth rates, the company said. GO! decided to expand after its current hub in nearby Neuenstein reached its capacity limits of 10,000 parcels a day in a time-frame of 3 hours.

“With the new hub we have now created a central handling point that has enough capacity for the next 10-15 years due to the modular system in terms of area and sorting technique,” said GO! CEO Ralf-Hans Dierks. The ceremonial opening is planned for this spring.

The 30,000 sqm facility provides a 3,600 sqm handling terminal with a completely automatic sorting system. Capacity is designed for 6,000 parcels per hour in the beginning and can be expanded to 15,000 parcels.

The main installation of the central hub is a high-performance sorter that handles parcels in a sensitive way. All the information is transported via a central volume, weighing and scanning system to the packages. The whole facility can be expanded through additional sorters and has been built with space for future extension.

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Hongkong Post and China Post-Shenzhen Post Bureau launch Hong Kong-Shenzhen Direct Mail Service

Posted by | Jan 16, 2008 | |

Hongkong Post and China Post-Shenzhen Post Bureau today (January 16) jointly launched the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Direct Mail Service.
The service has been introduced in response to market demand for more efficient communication between Hong Kong and Shenzhen as a result of the increasingly prosperous social and economic interaction between the two places. Business enterprises of both regions can use the new service to develop cross-border business opportunities.
The implementation of the Individual Visit Scheme and the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) since 2004 has made the Mainland the biggest tourism market of Hong Kong. According to the statistics of the Hong Kong Tourism Board, there were 14 million Mainland visitors in 2006, within which Shenzhen contributed 47.2 pct, or more than six million visitors. The business as well as consumer demand for leisure, entertainment and shopping has continued growing, bringing tremendous business opportunities to business enterprises of both regions.
To introduce the new service, Hongkong Post and China Post-Shenzhen Post Bureau today jointly held a seminar on “How Direct Mail Can Help Companies Grasp the Cross-border Business Opportunities with Mainland China” at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre followed by the Agreement Signing Ceremony.

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Nokia factory closure could hit DHL jobs (Germany)

Posted by | Jan 16, 2008 | |

Jobs may be lost at DHL due to the closure of a Nokia mobile phone production plant at Bochum in north-west Germany.

The Finnish company announced yesterday it will shut down its Bochum factory due to high operating costs and transfer production to Finland and lower-cost sites in Romania and Hungary. Some 2,300 employees will lose their jobs.

But a further 2,000 jobs at a range of Nokia suppliers and sub-contractors in the region are also in danger, according to German media reports. The locally-based Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported that DHL is considering lying off staff as a result of the factory closure.

“When the Nokia factory closes, then it may be that jobs at DHL disappear as well,” a DHL spokesman cited. Some 200 DHL staff work directly with Nokia, and are responsible for shipping mobile phones to various destinations.

Nokia is an important international customer for DHL Express which handles transportation and delivery of the high-value mobile phones in various markets around the world.

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