Tag: South Africa

The South African Post Office posts a 7pct rise in revenue and a 12pct growth in profit before tax

Posted by | Aug 26, 2008 | |

Presenting the results today, the South African Post Office (Sapo) posted a 12pct rise in profit before tax of R565m (2007: R507m) for the 2008 financial year on the back of a 7pct rise in revenue from R5.2bn in 2007 to R5.6bn in the year under review.

She said that the group’s shareholder had agreed to continue providing a subsidy to the Sapo of R372m for the coming year. This will be increased to R383m in 2010. This subsidy is primarily used to assist with the necessary operational and capital expenditure required to service areas that are not commercially viable in South Africa, yet do require services as mandated by the shareholder in terms of its licence and agreed upon by Sapo as part of its Universal Service Obligations.

The past year has seen many operational highlights, top of the agenda being the new business model that was defined and approved by the board of the Sapo, which in itself made major strides towards further compliance with codes of good corporate governance and the King 2 code, by establishing a Group Chairperson’s Committee, equivalent to an Investment Committee in a Public Company. The new operational design sees the group structured into 5 divisions:
• Mail
• Logistics
• Financial Services
• ICT and
• Property.

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South Africa has 5.7m new addresses

Posted by | Aug 15, 2008 | |

A roll-out of 5.7-million additional postal addresses has been achieved in the last three years to the end of March 2008, the SA Post Office (Sapo) said on Friday.

The project aimed to provide formal addresses to thousands of South Africans who previously did not have addresses, limiting their access to the mainstream economy.

Of the 5.7-million total addresses, 3.76-million (66 percent) were in rural areas and 1.94-million (34 percent) were in urban areas — bringing the number of addresses in the country to 12.5-million.

Before the Sapo project started, tribal and informal settlement communities found themselves negatively affected by Financial Intelligence Centre Act (Fica) regulations, as these required proof of residential address before any financial transactions could be effected.

In rural and informal settlements, Sapo found that a household had several different identifiers or numbers on the door, using different methods.

Rural address allocation has now been completed for large portions of the country. This included location details (registering villages within areas, identifying sections and dwellings in villages), client details (head of each dwelling, contact details) and postal details (post office, route and postcode).

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Quality of service management: eight operators certified

Posted by | Aug 4, 2008 | |

Eight postal operators were awarded a certification diploma by the Universal Postal Union.

The certification programme, which comprises the rankings A, B and C (gold, silver and bronze), measures how well Posts apply quality management processes.

The countries receiving certification were Botswana (C), Mauritius (A), Malawi (A), Namibia (B), Saudi Arabia (A), South Africa (C), Swaziland (C) and Ukraine (A). Giandev Moteea, Director General of Mauritius Post Ltd., said it was an honour to receive such an award after investing in new technologies and human resources development. During the award ceremony, Moteea said, “It is now important to maintain this certification by continuing to improve quality of service and keeping our customers satisfied, and thereby sustain growth throughout the sector.”

The UPU recognizes countries’ efforts in quality of service management, a priority area for the development of mail exchanges worldwide.

The certification process involves a comprehensive assessment of the organization, operations, customer information and after-sales service relating to ordinary international mail. Quality is not measured on the basis of absolute values such as speed and regularity.

Applicant countries first need to answer several UPU questionnaires. Experts then carry out an on-site assessment. A total of 17 postal operators have been certified since 2003.

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Post Office blacklisting confirmed

Posted by | Jun 23, 2008 | |

Internet retailer Amazon.com has confirmed that it will not use the South African Post Office for door-to-door deliveries, citing the need for the postal utility to improve its customer services.

In an interview via e-mail, Patty Smith, director of corporate communications for Amazon.com, diplomatically confirmed that a decision had been taken to change postal options, and this commenced on June 12.

Smith would not elaborate on why the SAPO’s customer services needed improving.

On Sunday, the Sunday Tribune made damning claims that the country’s postal service is the only one in Africa to have been blacklisted because of the large number of items that have gone missing, presumed stolen.

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UPS South Africa introduce 'Diad' service

Posted by | May 30, 2008 | |

UPS South Africa has introduced the Delivery Information Acquisition Device (Diad), which allows customers, through the Internet or a UPS call centre, to track their parcels’ position within the global UPS network chain.
Diad III is a hand-held computer scanner used by courier drivers to simultaneously capture and transmit real-time delivery information. It represents one of the fastest package-tracking systems in the world and will assist in the 3,5-million package queries received daily from UPS customers.
In the traditional supply services chain, the information on labels on packages has to be manually filled out. UPS industrial engineering manager for East and sub-Saharan Africa Christian Helleputte says UPS uses ‘smart’ package load data labels which have coded information on them, including a bar code that records a scanning, and a postal bar code which is linked to vehicle loading information.
Manual labels require employees to physically fill out information, with data being captured by an employee within an organisation. With the Diad system, Helleputte notes, UPS installs software in customers’ facilities, or on a computer, and the customers will duly load this information onto their own computer systems.

The mainframe technology of Diad can display all logistical information, including the time of departure of a parcel, the time of delivery, and how many stops are made during the day, which allows a customer to track the whereabouts of a parcel through the delivery chain. Further, it can also work out the best, most direct routes for package delivery.

UPS also has plans to launch GSS, a wireless scanner that is placed on a driver’s finger, in the third quarter of this year.

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