Spanish express carrier MRW has opened another four franchises in Spain. The new outlets are in Barcelona, Badajoz (Extremadura), Segorbe (Valencia) and Villajoyosa (Alicante).
MRW has 810 franchises in Andorra, Spain, Gibraltar and Portugal.
Spain emerges as the best value destination for UK holidaymakers in Europe in a new report by Post Office® Travel Services – despite the fact that pump prices in Switzerland have made it cheapest for unleaded petrol for the second year running.¹
In its’ Motoring on the Continent report, the Post Office® reveals that Switzerland is now the only major motoring holiday destination where unleaded fuel costs less than GBP 1 per litre.
However, the report places Spain as best value across Europe for both diesel fuel and motoring in a hire car. At GBP 1 per litre, it is also cheapest in the eurozone for unleaded petrol. Prices are around 30 per cent lower than in either Belgium or the Netherlands, which are popular motoring holiday choices for UK tourists.
The cost of unleaded petrol rose substantially in all 12 countries surveyed over the past 12 months. Increases ranged from 20 per cent in Italy and the UK to 32 per cent in France. But, although these figures make the much-debated rise in UK petrol prices look comparatively modest, the falling value of sterling masks the true position in Europe.
Post Office® head of travel Helen Warburton said: “Sterling has fallen in value by 14 per cent against the euro in the past year – and by even more in the other motoring holiday destinations. When we extracted this percentage from the price rises, we found that the UK had suffered the highest underlying price hike – 20 per cent at the pumps.
The report paints a very different picture for UK holidaymakers travelling to Europe in a diesel car. Spain is the cheapest destination by a wide margin. At 94p for a litre of diesel it is seven per cent cheaper than its nearest rival Austria (GBP 1.01) but 26 per cent lower than the UK, where diesel prices are some of Europe’s most expensive.
The differential between unleaded petrol and diesel was most marked in the UK and Sweden, with diesel costing 13p and 16p per litre more respectively. However the Post Office® found that diesel costs significantly less than unleaded fuel in four countries – the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Spain.
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.
Correos is promoting an environmental sustainability and good practices strategy, both in its direct activities and by means of agreements and contracts signed with its partners and technology allies in all spheres of its activities, which will considerably boost its Corporate Social Responsibility policy. With this strategy, the postal operator makes a clear commitment to reducing CO2 emissions, in both its own activities and those carried out by the businesses it works with.
In its last Board of Directors meeting, held on 30 May, Correos adopted the agreement that formally includes environmental sustainability as a corporate value and as an urgent and general application principle. The Spanish postal operator will apply the strategies for the future defined by the IPC (International Post Corporation) in its recent meeting in Paris, the main strategic pillar of which urges the postal sector to design specific plans that reduce its emissions and represent a significant contribution to sustainability.
With this initiative, Correos seeks to position itself at the forefront of the fight against climate change and will contribute to meeting the environmental impact reduction objective set by Global Compact, the world-wide pact promoted by the UN, and signed by Correos, to foster best social practices among businesses.
Read MoreCorreos contracted a service package aimed at building, implementing and maintaining its corporate IT architecture and the application integration standards to guarantee the efficiency and quality of its IT system.
With the development of this new corporate architecture, Correos aims to reduce IT system development and maintenance complexity, time and costs. At the same time, as associated advantages, it will attempt to optimise overall application performance, favouring modularity and scalability. Another advantage will be to maximise service standards and quality whilst minimising the human resources necessary to manage the different processes.
The investment allocated for this project is EUR 1.8 million. CORREOS has chosen IBM, the tender awardee, to carry out the necessary actions to improve its IT system user service standards, as well as to start up the construction of the different J2EE, ORACLE and SAP system architecture-based IT applications.
The introduction of this new corporate IT model is part of the “Integra” Plan, CORREOS’ strategic project aimed at improving and guaranteeing its IT system quality. This Plan includes a group of actions designed to promote the availability and use of IT tools and systems, both in postal operations, and in monitoring and control. The end objective is to have a technological platform with sufficient capacity to face the new requirements of an increasingly competitive postal sector.
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