Plans to part-privatize Royal Mail are attracting strong interest in its parcel division, which focuses on the more resilient road and home delivery market sectors. It currently holds an estimated 7% share in the European express market and is well positioned given the current economic climate, making it an interesting target for companies wanting to increase their footprint in these growth areas.
Read MoreFive postal and express companies have made their way into the UK’s top 100 B2B Superbrands.
Read MoreParcelforce announces two new delivery services – Parcelforce PM and Parcelforce 48 Large.
Read MoreBusiness Post chief executive Guy Buswell has revealed that its UK Mail division has picked up contracts following the demise of business-to-consumer parcel carrier Amtrak in the summer. “We got in touch with Amtrak’s administrators and offered to move the stranded parcels in the network,” says Buswell.
“We then agreed sight of the customer database, which gave us a jump-start on the competition. We did not buy any Amtrak assets – just its customer list.” Buswell says although UK Mail picked up business as a result of this move, other carriers, such as Parcelforce and DHL, also gained customers.
Parcelforce confirmed it has picked up a Kleeneze contract. DHL declined to comment. Meanwhile, Buswell says a name change is in the offing. “We’ve been thinking about changing the group name to UK Mail Group. We’ll probably decide on it in the new year, then go to shareholders next summer to be voted on at our AGM,” he adds.
B2C deliveries will be the major growth market for the European express and parcels industry in the next few years along with international deferred shipments as customers downtrade from premium express to slower but cheaper products, the Courier and Parcel Logistics conference in London was told.
Home deliveries will grow strongly as consumers increasingly shop on the internet instead of in the high street, but issues surrounding “final mile“ deliveries will continue to pose operational challenges, senior industry managers said on the event’s opening day.
Speakers agreed that the B2C market would move towards segmentation between premium deliveries of higher-value goods and standard delivery of lower-value items. However, there was little customer take-up of parcel collection and drop-off points so far, they commented.
Addressing market trends, speakers said that the world economic slowdown and recent financial markets turbulence would impact on business. The express industry would see fewer shipments and more bundling of volumes from financial customers, while customer relationships were being shaken up by the rapid changes in the financial sector. More generally, operators needed to right-size their networks, remove excess capacity but not endanger their customer service levels.
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