Tag: UK

Business Post expects FedEX contract changes

Posted by | Dec 18, 2006 | |

Business Post Group PLC has warned that following the acquisition of ANC Holdings by FedEx Corp, it has has been informed of FedEx’s intention to terminate its contract as ‘Global Service Participant’ in the UK.

Business Post said the nature and timing of the exit of the contract is yet to be agreed, but ‘we expect the contract to be terminated by September 2007.’

The FedEx contract currently represents 6 pct of group revenues, it added.

The company went on to say that it does not expect any impact on profits for this financial year, adding that ‘once the nature and timing of the contract exit has been agreed, we will give guidance on the profit impact for future years.’

Read More

UK postage price changes from April 2007

Posted by | Dec 18, 2006 | |

Royal Mail confirmed today that the price of a First Class stamp for a standard letter weighing up to 100g will rise by 2p to 34p from 2 April 2007, in line with the four-year price control set by postal regulator Postcomm in March 2006.

The price of a First Class stamp for a large letter up to 100g will rise by 4p to 48p.

The price of a Second Class stamp for a standard letter up to 100g will rise by 1p to 24p. The price of a Second Class stamp for a large letter up to 100g will rise by 3p to 40p.

Lorna Clarkson, Royal Mail’s Director of Commercial Policy and Pricing, said: “Now that the UK mail market is open to full competition, it is essential that Royal Mail’s prices more closely reflect the true cost of collecting, sorting and delivering around 80 million items of mail a day to 27 million addresses across the UK.

The price of business mail services will rise at a lesser rate than stamped mail. First Class franked mail and items carrying a printed postage impression (PPI) will attract a 2p discount for items up to 100g. The same discount will also apply to Second Class franked and PPI mail.
Prices will continue to decrease for heavier weight items, which will support the growth of the online retail market. Royal Mail is also offering business customers discounts for machineable mail, and the thresholds for volume discounts have been lowered for some business mail services to enable more customers to benefit.

Read More

Royal Mail hires 3,000 'address detectives'

Posted by | Dec 17, 2006 | |

Its one of the most frantic jobs before Christmas: making sure your greetings cards are sent in plenty of time. But the scribbled addresses on cards in the final post are proving to be a big problem for the Royal Mail.

The service has this year been forced to hire an extra 3,000 workers to decipher bad handwriting on an estimated 400 million poorly labelled packages and envelopes. Bad spelling, illegible handwriting and neglecting to include the postcode have been highlighted as reasons for post not arriving at its intended destination.

The 3,000 extra staff, known as “address detectives”, will be based at Plymouth, Stockport, Stoke and Doxford, in Northumberland, and will join 1,400 permanent staff members who decipher addresses that cannot be read by the Royal Mail’s automated sorting machines.

Letters and parcels with addresses that cannot be sorted by hand by address detectives in sorting offices are scanned into computers and emailed to colleagues, who run internet searches to determine where the mail should be sent.

Read More

Internet shopping hits GBP3bn in November

Posted by | Dec 15, 2006 | |

UK internet retail sales reached GBP3 billion in a month for the first time in November, as Britain’s 25 million online shoppers reaffirm their affinity with online Christmas shopping.
IMRG estimates that GBP3,260,000,000 was spent online during the month, at an average rate of GBP4.57 million per hour, approximately 45% (44.7%) more than in the same period last year.

November’s internet sales were more than half a billion pounds higher than those of the previous month, when the IMRG Index recorded a value of GBP2,729 million for October. This increase was ten times the average monthly increase of GBP50 million recorded during the first ten months of 2006.

During the same 10-month period two years ago, in 2004, the average growth rate was just GBP16 million per month.

Read More

2,500 post offices to be axed in the UK from next summer

Posted by | Dec 15, 2006 | |

The government yesterday unveiled plans to close 2,500 rural and urban post offices over 18 months – the fastest closure programme in the history of the network.
The cuts, which are expected to start next summer after national and local consultations, will slash the network to about 11,700 branches, fewer than half the peak of 25,000 in the 1960s. The trade and industry secretary, Alistair Darling, said a GBP1.7bn support package would be provided to fund rationalisation and maintain the GBP150m-a-year payments to the rural network at least until 2011.
He told the Commons that the post office network was losing GBP4m a week and had 4 million fewer customers than two years ago. The “big problem,” he said, was that “people are simply not using post offices as they once did … There is widespread recognition that the current size of the network is unsustainable.”

Royal Mail said it welcomed the proposals and would study their impact on its wider funding needs, which include new investment in the letters business, funding for the pension fund deficit and offering shares to employees.

Mr Darling outlined a series of criteria which the new network would have to meet: 99% of the population must be within three miles of an office and 90% within one mile. In deprived urban areas 99% of the population must be within one mile while in remote areas at least 95% should be within six miles.

The slimmed-down network will be supported by some 500 new outlets, including pubs, churches and village halls and even mobile offices.

Read More

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

P&P Poll

Loading

Have you noticed a decrease of non-EU inbound parcel volumes since the implementation of the new €3 charge?

Thank you for voting
You have already voted on this poll!
Please select an option!


View ResultsHide Results

Post & Parcel Magazine


Post & Parcel Magazine is our print publication, released 3 times a year. Packed with original content and thought-provoking features, Post & Parcel Magazine is a must-read for those who want the inside track on the industry.

Subscribe to the Magazine

 

Pin It on Pinterest