“Forward ever, backward never: onwards with Breaking Through”

 

POSTAL NEWS

No 89-2020

 

Formulated by UNI AproPost and Logistics Sector

 

1.   Royal Mail launches additional inflight delivery options.

November 05, 2020.

 

2.   PHLPost commits to going digital in 2021. November 04, 2020.

 

3.   CUPW Statement on Canadian Labour Congress support for Bill Morneau’s Candidacy for OECD Secretary General.

November 03, 2020.

 

4.   Nippon Express launches same-day Japan-US delivery service.November 03, 2020.

 

5.   Posti predicts record-breaking volumes for late 2020 – up to 300,000 parcels a day.October 30, 2020.

 

 

1.  Royal Mail launches additional inflight delivery options

November 05, 2020

Following the roll-out of Inflight delivery options in July, Royal Mail has now launched additional options which it says offer greater convenience and flexibility for receiving customers. These include delivery on another day and Local Collect from Royal Mail Customer Service Points and post offices across the UK. Customers can now access these options when the parcel is on its way, up until the day of delivery.

 

Royal Mail has also enhanced its redelivery service through the launch of next-day redeliveries, which can be requested for the customer’s address, preferred neighbor, safe place or local post office.

 

When retailers and other customers send items via Royal Mail Tracked and Royal Mail Special Delivery Guaranteed, the recipient will receive a notification prior to delivery including an estimated delivery window and the range of Inflight delivery options. Following delivery, Royal Mail will also notify the customer when and where the parcel has been left in line with their selected inflight delivery option.

 

Nick Landon, chief commercial officer at Royal Mail, commented, “Inflight delivery options are the number one ask from our sending and receiving customers, so delivering this feature was really important for us. After successfully launching and getting great feedback from a first phase of Inflight options, we are now giving our customers an even more convenient set of choices. After receiving a delivery notification, parcel recipients can now simply tell us when and where they want their parcels delivered if they aren’t going to be at home.”

 

Source : https://www.parcelandpostaltechnologyinternational.com/news/delivery

 

 

2.  PHLPost commits to going digital in 2021

November 04, 2020

To achieve President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s mandate to expedite the delivery of government services to our citizens as embodied in Republic Act No. 11032 or the Ease of Doing Business and Efficient Government Service Delivery Act of 2018, the Philippine Postal Corporation (PHLPost) will launch the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Project in the first quarter of next year.

 

The ERP project, which started in 2017, will computerize and automate the whole postal system. It aims, among others, to streamline the procedures and processes in postal operations and improve the competence and proficiency of PHLPost in delivering its services to the people.

 

PHLPost Chairman Norman Fulgencio remains steadfast: “our journey to modernize the postal system really took a while because it aims to cover the digitalization of the entire organization including the mail management system, corporate financial information system, financial counter system and human resource information system”.

 

Once in place, digital applications ranging from mobile to computer applications will be launched together.

 

This will reinforce existing strength across communications, e-commerce and financial services that would result in efficiency and convenience in delivering public service across the nation.

 

Fulgencio added, “We uphold our commitment to fulfill the President’s directive to bring innovative government services to the Filipino”.

 

The global postal sector has been affected by the pandemic due to the reduction in capacities and volume of mails brought about by the temporary halt in transportation and restrictions of areas under quarantine.

 

 The opening of economy and the airlines gradual recovery will keep the postal market relevant amid the challenge posed by the global health crisis.

 

PHLPost, however, remains undeterred and has continued to focus on achieving growth and stability, while simultaneously working on a range of strategic initiatives to further develop, enhance and innovate its services to keep up with the advancements in technology.

 

At present, PHLPost relies on the sale of postal products and services to fund its operations.

 

Source : https://postandparcel.info/128572/news/post

 

 

3.  CUPW Statement on Canadian Labour Congress support for Bill Morneau’s Candidacy for OECD Secretary General

November 03, 2020

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers objects to the decision of the CLC to join with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to support the appointment of Bill Morneau to the position of OECD Secretary-General.

 

In our view Mr. Morneau’s actions as Finance Minister demonstrated that he is exactly the wrong type of person to head any important international organization.

 

Mr. Morneau supported denying postal workers our basic democratic and constitutional right to collective bargaining in November 2018. He also was the architect of Bill C-27, an attack on the pensions of workers in the Federal sector. This legislation was opposed by the entire labour movement and many organizations representing seniors and pensioners.

 

In a letter to Mr. Morneau, the Canadian labour Congress described the legislation as “an unconscionable betrayal of the legal rights and protections of plan members.”

 

Furthermore the record demonstrates that during his tenure as Finance Minister, Mr. Morneau did little to pursue progressive policies with respect to the OECD’s core economic mandate of promoting inclusive growth, sustainable economic development and digital economy.

 

CUPW also objects to the CLC partnering with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to make this joint statement. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has a long history of supporting reactionary anti-worker legislation and opposing progressive measures advocated by the labour movement and our true allies.

 

Many of our members will find it shocking that the CLC would choose to make a public statement in support of Mr. Morneau when there are so many other important pressing issues that confront working people and need to be addressed by the labour movement.

 

Source :https://www.cupw.ca/en/

 

 

4.  Nippon Express launches same-day Japan-US delivery service

November 03, 2020

Nippon Express has launched a high-speed consolidated service between Haneda Airport in Japan and Atlanta Airport in the US.

The ‘Nex-Speed Super-Fast Atlanta’ is a direct service that transports airfreight on direct flights from Japan to the US — and cargo destined for delivery within 300km of Atlanta is delivered on the same day.

 

“[Nippon Express] has its own facility in close proximity to Atlanta Airport and this, combined with the (optional) emergency delivery service offered by the Atlanta Branch, enables same-day delivery,” the company explained.

 

 

“With operations at both the departure and arrival points being handled in-house, lead time is about a day and a half less than that of Nippon Express’s conventional services.”

 

Source : https://www.aircargonews.net/sectors/express

 

 

5.     Posti predicts record-breaking volumes for late 2020 – up to 300,000 parcels a day

October 30, 2020

Posti is predicting a record peak season in e-commerce for late 2020 when parcel volumes might climb to record-breaking numbers. Posti’s estimate is based on the lessons learnt during the COVID-19 spring and research on the increase in Finns’ online shopping. For instance, a recent study suggests that Black Friday as a shopping day will be 1.5 times more popular than last year. To prepare for the record peak season, Posti has taken several actions, including significantly expanding its pick-up point network and investing in safe home deliveries, which are expected to increase due to COVID-19.

 

“We predict that the coming shopping days and Christmas shopping will take place online even more than before. If our forecasts are correct, we will deliver almost 1.5 million weekly parcels during the peak season and, at most, almost two million parcels a week. In the current situation, many customers want to avoid busy stores and order shopping directly to their homes instead. Our Doorstep service has been extremely popular, and I believe that the demand will increase, especially if the COVID-19 situation gets worse,” says TommiKässi, Vice President, Parcel and eCommerce at Posti.

 

An extensive pick-up point network and weekend deliveries will make for a smoother record peak season

The pick-up point network plays a key role in ensuring smooth parcel traffic during peak volumes. Posti has approximately 850 outlets that provide personal service and, by the end of the year, 2,200 parcel lockers favored by consumers. For the peak season, Posti is setting up an additional temporary network corresponding to the capacity of 200 pick-up points all round Finland. This year, customers can order their shopping directly to temporary pick-up points, too, and that is, in fact, recommended.

 

“We have increased our pick-up point capacity by more than 30 percent this year. We are doing everything in our power so that as many people as possible receive their parcels at the location they have chosen. Unfortunately, if parcel lockers are full, some parcels will have to be redirected to the second nearest available pick-up point instead of the nearest one. This means the recipient will receive their parcel faster. We hope that parcels are picked up as soon as possible from the notice of arrival to free up space for other parcels,” says Kässi. 

 

Posti is hiring approximately 2,500 employees for the Christmas season throughout Finland. Throughout the season, Posti will also be delivering items for pick-up on weekends to make parcel traffic smoother. Seven-day parcel delivery covers almost half of the entire population.

 

Source : https://www.posti.com/en/media/media-news/2020

 

POSTAL NEWS

No 90-2020

 

Formulated by UNI AproPost and Logistics Sector

 

1.  Postal Service has until Thursday to report late-vote total.

November 05, 2020.

 

2. Free same-day delivery with Croatian Post's Locodels.

November 05, 2020.

 

3.  Purolator launches mobile pickup trucks ahead of holiday surge. November 02, 2020.

 

4.  Resignation of Christine Holgate does not fix serious, systemic issues with management at Australia Post. November 02, 2020.

 

5.  bpost group continues expansion in the Netherlands with future-proof Active Ants e-fulfilment centre.

October 30, 2020.

 

 

1.  Postal Service has until Thursday to report late-vote total

November 05, 2020

The U.S. Postal Service manager in charge of election mail was given until 9 a.m. Thursday in Washington to calculate and report to a judge the total number of mail-in ballots that weren’t delivered by Nov. 3.

 

“What I want to focus on is what’s in all these postal facilities, and getting all those ballots out of the post facilities so they can be counted,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said at a hearing on Wednesday. “That’s my primary focus right now.”

 

Sullivan gave USPS executive manager Kevin Bray his deadline and said, “We want the ballots moved.”

 

Delayed mail is likely to result in thousands of valid ballots not being counted in some states where lawmakers or courts didn’t extend deadlines to deal with the pandemic -- and, if late enough, could invalidate votes in states that did. The judge’s order comes as President Donald Trump’s campaign is suing to throw out ballots that arrive late.

 

‘No Excuse’

Bray, who is in charge of processing the 2020 election mail, testified that there’s “no excuse” for mail-in votes not being delivered on time, as he was questioned about delays in Pennsylvania -- one of the remaining battleground states that could determine whether the president wins re-election or Democratic challenger Joe Biden is inaugurated in January.

 

The USPS veteran told the court he didn’t know why roughly 1,400 ballots mailed in central Pennsylvania on Saturday didn’t make it to election officials until Tuesday, a day late by the agency’s standards.

 

“I expect every piece of mail to be delivered, especially a ballot piece,” Bray said under questioning by a lawyer for the NAACP, which sued over disruptive operational changes at the Postal Service. “I don’t know why. There’s no excuse. It never should have happened.”

 

There are no “unaccounted ballots within the Postal Service network,” USPS spokesperson Dave Partenheimer said in a statement. “These ballots were delivered in advance of the election deadlines. We employed extraordinary measures to deliver ballots directly to local boards of elections. When this occurs, by design, these ballots bypass certain processing operations and do not receive a final scan.”

 

The case is one of several filed against USPS over changes the agency made that hobbled it just before a widely expected flood of mail-in ballots. One judge said it was “easy to conclude” the changes initiated this summer by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a longtime Republican donor, were intended to cast doubt on the election result. DeJoy has rejected that inference.

 

USPS data filed with the court before the hearing show delays across the country, despite “extraordinary measures” a judge ordered weeks ago to avoid them. The Postal Service denied news reports that 300,000 ballots were missing, saying data filed with the court were being misconstrued.

 

Source : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-04

 

 

2. Free same-day delivery with Croatian Post's Locodels

November 05, 2020

Same-day delivery is growing in Zagreb, with the latest announcement from Hrvatska pošta (Croatian Post) and its Locodels subsidiary.

 

Customers shopping on Croatian Post’s “Yellow Click” website - www.zutiklik.hr - can opt for free same-day delivery if they live in the City of Zagreb, as well as surrounding areas VelikaGorica, Samobor, Sveta Nedelja and Zaprešić.

Delivery will be performed by Locodels, Croatian Post’s crowd-sourced same-day courier subsidiary.

 

All products ordered by 15:30 will be delivered by Locodels on the same day. Orders can be paid by card or cash on delivery. The delivery service includes electronic products such as televisions, white goods and air conditioners.

 

Croatian Post acquired same-day delivery start-up Locodels in October 2019. Locodels deliveries can be scheduled from the morning to early evening.

 

Already Locodels delivers same-day orders for customers who shop on www.links.hr are able to choose same-day delivery. Orders received by 4pm on weekdays and 12noon on weekends will be delivered by Locodels on the same day to addresses in the Zagreb area.

 

There’s a surcharge for same-day delivery of 99 HRK, which is around 13 EUR. The fee is the same regardless the value of customer's order.

 

The Locodels fleet currently includes more than 100 drivers in the Zagreb region. According to Croatian Post, the drivers can deliver hundreds of small and medium-sized packages every day.

 

Source :http://www.thepostalhub.com/blog

 

 

3.  Purolator launches mobile pickup trucks ahead of holiday surge

November 02, 2020

With more Canadians turning online for their holiday shopping needs, Purolator is adding new drop-off locations and more mobile pickup stops to deal with surging demand.

 

The shipping provider, which is majority-owned by Canada Post, said it expects to process 46 million packages over the holiday season, a 20 per cent increase from the same period last year. This comes after a summer period that featured volumes similar to what Purolator deals with on shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

 

“We’ve been calling this the year of the super peak, because in terms of year-over-year growth, we’ve seen 40 to 50 per cent increases when it comes to volume surges,” Purolator chief executive John Ferguson said in an interview.

 

“It’s definitely been a lot of volume, sustained over a long period of time.”

 

To deal with the surging demand expected between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24, Purolator is increasing the number of access points for shipment drop-off and pick-up by 30 per cent to 1,650. This includes 135 new locations at Michaels retail stores and 30 mobile quick stop trucks. The mobile trucks will be deployed in dense urban areas – for example, parked outside a cluster of condos in downtown Toronto – to provide easier access for consumers and ease the burden on the company’s network.

 

“On the e-commerce front, we’ve had a big surge... and we think the volume levels are here to stay,” Ferguson said, adding that the company has made sure to balance the volume it takes on with its logistics capacity.

“We’ve actually found ourselves with lots of demand and volume, to the point where we’re having to be careful about how much we even take on.”

 

Ferguson says that COVID-19 has accelerated the company’s digital and mobility-focused initiatives. Last month, Purolator unveiled several projects aimed at helping address last-mile delivery challenges while improving its environmental impact. The company is now testing new fully electric low-speed vehicles in Toronto and has expanded its fleet of cargo e-bikes in Montreal.

 

Purolator will also hire approximately 3,000 employees to assist through the busy holiday season.

 

While Canadians expect to spend less over the 2020 holiday season, largely due to concerns about the country’s economic outlook and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, many plan to use online sources for holiday purchases.

 

According to Deloitte’s 2020 Holiday Retail Outlook, online shopping will make up 44 per cent of Canadian holiday budgets, up from 36 per cent last year. The survey also found that 47 per cent of consumers have been shopping more online since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak began.

 

Canada Post has urged Canadians to shop early this holiday season to avoid the late arrival of gifts caused by a pandemic-induced shift to online shopping. The postal service is scaling up operations to handle an expected surge in parcel volumes by adding more than 4,000 seasonal employees, more than 1,000 vehicles and extra equipment.

 

Source :https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news

 

 

4.  Resignation of Christine Holgate does not fix serious, systemic issues with management at Australia Post

November 02, 2020

Australia Post’s workforce is dismayed at recent management strategies including intentional underemployment, the move away from daily deliveries and a parcel back log that continues to grow out of control in many areas.

 

National Secretary Greg Rayner said “There’s something seriously wrong when management thinks nothing of splashing out on Cartier luxury watches but delivers only cut backs and service cuts for the rest of us,

 

“The resignation of Christine Holgate won’t stop the rot at Post. 

 

“The rest of the so-called leadership team must be held accountable for this mess.”

 

National President Shane Murphy said “Public confidence in this once-iconic institution will not be restored unless Ms Holgate’s resignation is the beginning, and not the end, of serious cultural change and reform,

 

“They are failing to deliver on the sole purpose of their existence – for the taxpayer, for their customers and for their workforce.“

 

Source :http://www.cepu.org/2020/11/02

 

 

5.  bpost group continues expansion in the Netherlands with future-proof Active Ants e-fulfilment centre

October 30, 2020

·       Expansion of e-commerce logistics activities in the Netherlands and Belgium

·       New 20,000m² e-fulfilment warehouse in Roosendaal

·       Innovative with 105 robots to assist employees

 

bpost group subsidiary Active Ants has moved into a new-build fulfilment centre in Roosendaal, where people and robots work alongside each other in a highly efficient setup. Thousands of shipments are prepared at the state-of-the-art facility for online stores. Active Ants will also open a branch in Belgium in 2021, as bpost group continues to expand its e-commerce logistics services in Belgium and beyond. 

 

“Storage, picking and sorting are all fully automated. Employees form an efficient team with robots for the order picking. The return flow and the receipt of goods continue to be processed manually,” says Jeroen Dekker, managing partner at Active Ants. “This mechanisation leads to greater efficiency, high quality and a pleasant work environment for our employees. The setup is unique in the world.”

 

People and robots in union

65 autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) bring empty boxes to the employees, who fill them with the goods brought by other robots. The AMRs then transport the boxes to the packaging machines, where they are sealed and weighed. The boxes are made as small as possible to minimise filling and empty air. A shipping label is also attached.  The AMRs then sort the sealed boxes by shipper.

 

Around 40 robots are tasked with picking goods from the storage bins and bringing them to employees. This goods-to-person system is carefully designed to have a very small footprint. The system stores up to six times more goods per square metre and the robots generate their own energy, minimising the use of mains power.

 

Environmentally friendly, with the human touch

A box sealing machine with integrated printer has been specially designed for Active Ants. This means that personalised printed boxes can be made for every customer. “This unique functionality allows us to create personalised packaging for not just large but now also for small online stores,” says Jean Lahaye, managing partner at Active Ants. “There is no longer any need to keep hundreds of pallets of preprinted boxes. That cuts customer costs and further shrinks the footprint,” Lahaye says.

 

E-commerce logistics a driver of growth at bpost group

As its subsidiaries continue to grow, bpost is increasingly active in e-commerce logistics worldwide. This enables the company to expand around the globe, while also remaining one of Belgium’s biggest employers.

 

The opening of the new facility in Roosendaal brings the total number of bpost group fulfilment centres in Europe up to eight. There are two Active Ants sites in the Netherlands and Radial has six facilities in Europe: one each in the Netherlands, the UK, Italy and Poland, and two in Germany. They form a network of centres close to customers, bpost group’s response to the increasing demand for logistics services from e-commerce companies.

 

Active Ants expanding into Belgium and Germany in 2021

bpost is committed to remaining the leading e-commerce logistics provider in Belgium and helping drive the growth of Belgian online stores of all stripes with a wide range of solutions. Active Ants will launch operations at an existing site in Boom, located between Antwerp and Mechelen, in the spring of 2021.

 

“I’m proud of this new step in our e-commerce logistics activities in the Netherlands,” says Jean-Paul Van Avermaet, CEO of bpost group.  “This shows not only that we are transforming our business in the right way to respond to the changing needs of our customers, but also that we have the courage to deploy state-of-the-art technology and innovation on the market to make our mark worldwide. I wish the colleagues at Active Ants huge success in this new step an look forward to the opening in Belgium.”

 

Source :https://press.bpost.be/