Tag: La Poste

International Freight Industry to shift from air transport to sea and rail

Posted by | Jul 15, 2008 | |

Australia Post’s Managing Director, Graeme John, foresees cutbacks on flights and a shift towards sea and rail deliveries with regard to the annual meeting of the Kahala Posts Group last week.

John said that growth in international freight from consumer goods such as electronics had been managed on a “just in time” basis, with air delivery preferred to other means of transport due to its speed advantage. But that approach was no longer viable as global warming would have an enormous influence on the postal industry worldwide increasing the pressure to shift towards less environmentally-damaging modes of delivery.

The Kahala Posts Group (KPG) which is the alliance of nine national postal administrations in Australia, the United States, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, France and Britain, was founded five years ago and named after a resort the members stayed at during their founding meeting in Hawaii. The postal operators have since launched an upgraded, guarantee-based international service between their respective countries and territories.

Therefore, Kahala Group focused instead on reliability of delivery. But to keep the reliability of the service, the Kahala members had to upgrade their tracking systems. It also required the creation of a “delivery calculator”, a database of eight billion postcodes that allows a customer to walk into any postal outlet, list their destination and be told a precise time window during which a parcel would be delivered, Brisbane Times further reported.

While the private couriers already offered that service and faster delivery, the Kahala members undercut their prices by 40 pct to 50 pct to stay competitive in price.

John further said that a worsening economic environment could prompt a trend to slower “deferred” delivery services.

The Kahala partnership is also moving beyond postage, with Australia Post, China Post and the US Postal Service preparing to launch a group-owned money transfer service to compete against Western Union, Brisbane Times added.

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EU postal operators failing to communicate

Posted by | Jul 14, 2008 | |

Swiss Post and Royal Mail have been praised for their regular news bulletins by Hellmail, the European postal industry news site.

Editor for Hellmail, Steve Lawson, said “Many Euro postal operators have been rather slow to market themselves and communicate in the wider context since Liberalisation began.” he said.

He said that some postal operators should be praised for their efforts. Swiss Post particularly, with a whole section devoted to media communications including an impressive image library. Royal Mail too has a dedicated press office with almost daily news.

“Oddly, Lithuania scores well in terms of news output, but France’s La Poste, Turkey, Slovakia and Slovenia fall far behind. Italy, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria rarely update their news, The Ukraine, Latvia and Luxembourg have no translation facility at all for news, and Romania stopped producing translated news altogether in 2007.”

Hellmail found that most web sites were reasonably easy to navigate except for Denmark & Greece which had a Flash into that was very difficult to get past. Swiss Post and Royal Mail scored the highest for news output, closely followed by DHL, Malta, and Russian Post.

“Clearly there is much room for improvement and we have emailed most of these operators asking them to look closer at the way they communicate. Obviously some European postal services are heavily tied into state ownership, and in some cases, political regimes, but even so, with Europe pushing for closer ties under postal liberalisation, some countries have simply failed to exploit the potential here. From our perspective, its so important that smaller European countries can be heard. We really do want to know what they’re about.” he said.

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Paris braves the storms and ties itself to a Poste

Posted by | Jul 8, 2008 | |

Rothschild, the French bank, has been hired to lead La Poste to a partial privatisation, which could see it valued at about EUR 10bn (USD 15.7bn) in a flotation within two years. Of course that depends on at least two things – first a change in legislation, which in turn will require support from a sometimes surprisingly hesitant ruling UMP party.

Privatising GdF, for example, was far from a done deal, in spite of support from then party leader and presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy. Imagine how much more reluctant many deputies may be if they believe a privatisation could threaten services in their local constituencies that go well beyond delivering letters, and stretch even to baguettes and newspapers.

Second, the unions – already feeling marginalised by President Sarkozy’s divide-and-rule tactics – are up in arms about the possibility that the legislative process could be launched early next year. The president’s quip this weekend that France had changed so much that no one would notice if there was a strike, was an almost direct challenge to unions to prove him wrong.

Nonetheless, the government seems determined and the process is being marketed as the only possible response to the arrival of full postal liberalisation in 2011. With the formidable Deutsche Post gearing up for an assault on the French postal market, La Poste has little choice, according to Jean-Paul Bailly, chief executive. The French group has been successfully restructured, is profitable and and has resolved its pension issues. But it still needs the financial flexibility that a flotation would bring to open up new markets and revive its 12,500 post offices to face competition more effectively, he argues.

That may be true, but every silver lining has a cloud and that may be in the timing. Why the government believes this is the right moment to raise the question of a postal sell-off remains a mystery. Though the unions have been powerless in the face of Mr Sarkozy’s relentless reform agenda, the public mood remains uncertain. Rising energy costs seem to have obscured the benefits of EDF’s and GdF’s sell-offs and there is considerable public discontent over constrained consumer spending power.

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La Poste to give consumer credit with Societe Generale

Posted by | Jul 8, 2008 | |

The banking arm of the French postal service, La Banque Postale, is to provide consumer credit by the end of next year in partnership with Societe Generale, French daily Les Echos reported on Tuesday.

The proposal was reported as the French government mulls a partial privatisation of the French postal service.

The daily said the joint-venture, which involves SocGen unit Franfinance, is to be approved by La Banque Postale’s board on Thursday. One option being considered would see La Poste contribute to the venture in paper and Societe Generale in cash.

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France declines comment on La Poste IPO target

Posted by | Jul 7, 2008 | |

The French government declined on Monday 7th July to comment on a report that a possible partial privatisation of La Poste could raise 2 to 3 billion euros (USD 4.7 billion) to help prepare one of the bastions of state ownership for competition.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Chief of Staff lifted a taboo on changing the ownership of the postal service, one of the country’s biggest employers with 280,000 staff, on Sunday by saying the idea of a stock market listing “deserves interest”.
The move would form part of France’s efforts to prepare itself for the liberalisation of the European postal market by 2011.
“We have no comment because La Poste has not put forward a proposal yet,” a finance ministry spokesman said.
“A flotation is one of the options being studied,” a spokeswoman for La Poste said, but said a proposal had not been made formal.
The tentative flotation plan, first reported in Le Monde last week, has angered unions already involved in sporadic strikes to defend pension rights and the 35-hour working week.
The Sud-PTT postal union said it would be “the end of the public postal service” and that a similar step taken by France Telecom had merely saddled it with massive debts.
French daily Echos said on Monday that La Poste, which generated sales of 20.8 billion euros in 2007, was looking to sell 20 percent of its share capital in a possible flotation that would value it at more than 10 billion euros.
Sarkozy’s Chief of Staff Claude Gueant warned on French radio on Sunday of the consequences of failing to respond.
“If we do nothing, very clearly it will be the German post or the Dutch post that will distribute mail in France,” he said.
France’s post office derives 56 percent of its revenues from mail services and 23 percent from its low-fee banking subsidiary La Banque Postale.
Any move towards privatisation would require changing the legal status of the French postal service, a delicate political operation that would involve turning it into a public limited company or “societe anonyme” instead of a civil service branch.
The government says any changes would not threaten La Poste’s public service status.

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