Tag: UK

Postal chief sees freight returning to rail and sea (Australia)

Posted by | Jul 7, 2008 | |

The international freight industry will face increasing pressure to cut back on flights and revert to sea and rail deliveries because of environmental concerns, the head of Australia Post predicts.
Australia Post’s managing director, Graeme John, who will be chairman of an annual meeting this week in Queensland of nine of the world’s biggest postal groups, said the problem of global warming would have an increasing influence on the way the global postal industry is run.
Mr John said growth in international freight from consumer goods such as electronics had been managed on a “just in time” basis, with air travel preferred to other forms of transport because of its speed advantage. But that approach was no longer viable.
The postal groups meeting this week – Australia, the United States, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, France and Britain – are members of the Kahala Post Group, a consortium created five years ago to help them compete with private freight companies.
Mr John instigated the consortium because he “wanted to do something about the dominance of the DHLs and the FedExs and UPSs in the international parcel network”, as did other former monopoly postal groups.
The Kahala group – named after a resort the members stayed at during their founding meeting in Hawaii – conceded they could not compete with the private companies on speed, so instead focused on reliability of delivery.
But to guarantee that reliability 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 window during which a parcel would be delivered.
While the private couriers already offered that certainty, and faster delivery, the Kahala members undercut their prices by 40 per cent to 50 per cent.
As well as pressure to shift towards less environmentally-damaging modes of transport, Mr John said 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.

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Royal Mail and La Poste Privatisation Plans

Posted by | Jul 7, 2008 | |

Both the UK and France are looking at the possibility of part-privatisation of their state-owned postal services although postal unions and some MPs are likely to resist any attempts to privatise, in part or in whole.

In the UK, there is growing concern that the funding of the universal service is being undermined by what some see as an over-zealous drive to introduce competition into the market. The CWU (communication workers union), which repesents the majority of postal workers at Royal Mail, has already hinted at the possible withdrawal of it’s contribution to Labour Party funds if the present government continues to back what it describes as a ‘slash and burn’ policy on postal reform. The union’s present view is that Royal Mail is being run down as an excuse to privatise it.

The European Commission has taken a rather ‘loose’ approach to deciding how the USO could be maintained in a deregulated European postal market by saying that it was up to individual countries to decide how it should be funded. Some argue that in a somewhat grand plan to liberalise postal services quickly, it has effectively ‘passed the buck’ on the USO. Last year saw demonstrations in Berlin from unions concerned about the USO and the impact on jobs.

Neither the UK or France has made any firm committment to privatisation yet, but the idea is likely to find favour with both governments as a way to ease problems in a more competitive market. Directors at France’s La Poste, are said to be keen on the idea of an IPO that would involve 20 percent of the company’s total capital, said to be worth around 10 billion euros.

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Royal Mail: too slow to adapt to a changing business worldChristine Buckley, Industrial Editor

Posted by | Jul 7, 2008 | |

By the end of the year there will be just over 11,500 post offices left in Britain. Twenty years ago there were nearly double that amount at 21,100.

Too many people, particularly those left without a local post office, the decline of the network is the most visible evidence of more sweeping changes that have been hitting Royal Mail.

The public has not taken the axing of one in two post offices over 20 years without a fight. The latest round of 2,500 closures, which is nearing its completion, has triggered a storm of protests, both from spontaneous local community campaigns and from local Conservative Party petitions.

It began a regional roll out in January and will finish the last set of consultations at the end of next month in Herefordshire, the West Midlands and Worcestershire.

The network of small post offices, as opposed to the 500-plus larger, high-street offices, are franchised businesses mainly run by individuals or families. But their costs have proved difficult for Royal Mail because of changes in the workload at the offices.

Business dropped dramatically several years ago when the Government began to phase out the payment of benefits in cash at post offices. It switched to direct payment in to recipients’ bank accounts or via the Post Office card account, a no-frills bank account. The contract for the card account was given to Royal Mail but it is about to be renewed after going to tender. Sub postmasters fear the decimation of the highly shrunken network if the contract is not awarded again to Royal Mail and instead goes to a rival bidder, such as Paypoint.

Critics of Royal Mail’s handling of the closure programmes say that it is not just the loss of benefits business that led to the erosion of the network but an unimaginative range of services and tardiness in adapting to the changing world of communications.

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UK parcels firm APC Overnight invests in hub extension

Posted by | Jul 7, 2008 | |

APC Overnight has invested over GBP 250,000 (EUR 316,000) in extending its facilities and purchasing additional high-tech equipment for its National Sortation Centre at Essington in the north of Birmingham.

Following a sustainable construction approach, the new hub developments boast a new 2,400 sqm mezzanine floor giving a 50 pct larger sorting area, with five specially designed lifts that transport parcel cages to the mezzanine in less than 40 seconds. APC says that the investment has boosted its capability and will offer significant improvements in customer service during peak times. In addition, a 1,400 sqm weatherproof canopy has been installed over the company’s unloading bays offering maximum protection for parcels and staff in all weather conditions.

With the additional resources, APC is able to streamline and accelerate its sorting processes by allocating distinct areas for each type of business. This includes a dedicated section called “M Sort area” for 10,000 parcels a night hub handles for local Midlands destinations. This streamlined method of specialised sortation also improves the capacity of the main sorting systems.

APC Overnight, with more than 125 local depots, transports and delivers more than one million parcels each month, and provides a better-than-99.8 pct on-time delivery record.

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DX Expands Mail Sorting Capability

Posted by | Jul 4, 2008 | |

DX, the independent postal service, has opened a new sorting centre in Avonmouth.
The new centre is the result of a good year for DX, which has gone from strength to strength, even during the bitter postal strike at Royal Mail last year.
DX, which operates a network of pickup and collection points via solicitors and financial service companies, says the new GBP 650,000 centre means it can improve the speed and accuracy of sorting operations and a further 30 new jobs have been created.
In May, DX announced that over 600 Glasses Direct customers now receive their glasses via The DX Group on a next day delivery basis.
The specialised service ensures peace of mind for Glasses Direct customers as DX obtains a signature on delivery, and where a signature is not possible, the glasses are posted through customers letter boxes using a three point identification criteria of the property noted. This provides Glasses Direct with the assurance that glasses have been delivered to the right place.
The DX Group also offers a re-delivery service free of charge to Glasses Direct customers, so if for any reason the customer is not able to receive them, they can arrange to have their glasses re-delivered the next day to an existing or new address.
Other clients of The DX Group include the Identity & Passport (IPS) Office, members of the legal industry and major credit card & financial services.

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