Itella will test the suitability of electric mopeds for mail delivery service use in various parts of Finland by acquiring, for trials, a total of ten electric mopeds, specially designed for mail delivery purposes. The trial runs will start during the summer in Espoo, Pori, Pirkkala, Lempäälä, Vaasa and Teuva.
Read MoreThe Belgian Post Office recently collaborated with NetApp for its data backup and archival. To manage this data, the post office is switching to a virtual infrastructure developed by NetApp in combination with conventional physical tape. In doing this, the post office is keeping pace with the current trend of virtualization in the storage environment, minimizing risk, and maximizing its return on investment in IT spend.
Because of the increasing quantity of data and activity on the post office’s network, implementing a more flexible system became a critical business need. After researching its options, the Belgian Post Office decided to partner with NetApp to create an archival and backup system that took advantage of the flexibility of disk-to-disk speed and flexibility and integrated with its existing tape infrastructure. The resulting system allows for near-constant availability of backed up data, more robust disaster recovery, and the ability to grow the system in the future with less overall cost.
“The Belgian Post Office had a classic need that growing businesses often face — and that the NetApp® VTL was specifically designed to fulfill,” said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing at NetApp. “We’re extremely pleased to share this example of how partnering with NetApp to reduce backup times and increase data availability can also have a greater effect on reducing future costs and achieving broader business goals.”
The NetApp NearStore® Virtual Tape Library is a disk-to-disk backup appliance that appears like a tape library to a backup software application but provides the superior speed and reliability of disk technologies. Developed specifically to address the requirements of backup administrators, NearStore VTL solutions increase the performance and reliability of backups, simplify backup management, and reduce D2D storage costs by up to 67% through the use of high-performance disk compression.
Read MoreViet Nam is updating the set of laws surrounding the post in order to guide postal activities and control new market developments, especially the participation of domestic and foreign logistics companies.
Viet Nam would also raise the quality of postal services by separating the post from telecommunications and establishing an independent postal enterprise, the Viet Nam Posts Corporation, said Deputy Minister of Information and Communication Nguyen Thanh Hung.
He said the ministry was considering raising the price of postage stamps from VND800 to between VND1,200-VND1,500.
Hung said the present price was below operating costs, but added that a hike would help local postal operators improve postal networks and invest in new technologies, as the Government was still paying compensation for losses in the postal sector. However, he said the timing of any hike would not be decided until next year.
Hung was speaking as about 150 delegates from 30 countries gathered in Ha Noi for the 31st Asian Pacific Postal Executive Council (APPU-EC) meeting.
They will focus on such things as domestic express mail services (EMS), mail security and e-business.
According to the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC), several new postal services will be outlined at the meeting, such as e-post from South Korea.
“The aim is to strengthen co-operation among postal administrations in the Asia Pacific region,” said Nguyen Thanh Hung.
Hung said the five-day event would also discuss and harmonise regional views on proposals for the Universal Postal Union Congress later this year.
“Viet Nam continues to develop its postal sector, and I hope the event will help us gain more practical experience from member countries,” said Hung
Read MoreThe Post Office has moved to stem fears that thousands more branches could be closed on top of the 2,500 scheduled to shut, claiming it has “no plan or desire” to shrink the network further.
The reassurance follows speculation that the Government’s closure plan would need to be extended by cutting another 4,000 post offices. Post Office executives said today they had the funding to maintain branch levels for at least the next three years.
The controversial plan by Royal Mail to close 2,500 branches to save GBP 500,000 a day, will take the network down to 11,500. Until now, further reductions had not been ruled out.
Speaking before the Commons Enterprise committee yesterday, Alan Cook, the Post Office managing director, said: “We must be clear about this. We strongly maintain a desire to keep the network at 11,500 plus.”
He added: “We do have to work within government funding and policy, but we would oppose further plans to shrink the size of the network.”
However, Mr Cook admitted the pledge could only be kept if his company won the government’s post office card account, through which millions of people are paid state benefits.
Ministers have put the card account contract out to tender and are understood to have received rival offers. The National Federation of SubPostmasters has warned that up to 3,000 post offices could be forced to close if the network loses the card account contract. The government is due to make a decision later this summer. Yesterday, Mr Cook said he was confident that the Post Office would win the contract.
Read MoreCorreos is going to contract around 2,000 workers as intermittent permanent employees, instead of signing temporary contracts as it did up until the last collective agreement, to cover its employment requirements in the summer campaign for deliveries on foot and by motorcycle and sorting. The postal operator has once again decided on this type of contract that has enabled the creation of stable, high-quality employment and contributed to an increase in the quality of the services it offers citizens and businesses.
Last year, more than 3,000 workers joined Correos as intermittent permanent employees, 50 pct of which have become permanent employees in the Public Company within its Permanent Transfer Selection Process, the postal company’s horizontal mobility and promotion system.
In this way, CORREOS promotes a clear strategy of fostering stable, high-quality employment, significantly reducing job insecurity. Since November 2006, it has taken on nearly 10,400 permanent workers to carry out delivery tasks in urban and rural sorting offices, and customer services in the post offices. These will now be joined by another 2,000 workers, hired as intermittent permanent employees to cover the structural personnel requirements that occur every year during holiday or peak activity periods, such as the summer and Christmas campaigns.
Correos has been applying this new company recruitment system, which is more agile, dynamic and decentralised, since the 2nd Collective Agreement and General Employment Agreement, signed on 19 June 2006.
This new system contributes towards improving the quality of the service given to customers and users, as the workers gain experience in their jobs and work areas thanks to their stable labour relationship with the postal company.
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