Red Parcel Post, the planned new German parcel operator, has started promoting itself topotential business customers with a marketing offensive at this week’s BVL German logistics
conference in Berlin. The privately-owned company, which aims to launch services at the start of2007, said it had written to several thousand logistics decision-makers to promote its plannedservices. At the conference, attended by about 3,000 logistics and transport managers, the companydisplayed a prototype delivery van.Red Parcel Post said in a statement that it aimed to gain a double-digit market share byundercutting the prices of other companies. “This will be possible because we can build up acompletely new transport and sorting system, and do not have to hold on to structures that makesmooth implementation of the latest technology difficult,” founder Dieter Seegers-Krückeberg wasquoted as saying. The company said it would target B2B parcel shippers from industrial and retailsectors, as well as contract logistics suppliers that were seeking an independent serviceprovider.
The new parcel carrier plans to operate a Germany-wide network with just four highly automatedsorting hubs, containerised transport from pick-up to delivery, wide-scale use of RFID technologyand satellite navigation-based management of deliveries. ”The combination of these technologiesreduces handling and sorting processes and also enables dynamic delivery rounds that can beoptimised on a daily basis,” commented technical director Bernhard Brönner.
The financial backers of Red Parcel Post have not yet been officially announced. The companyreportedly plans to invest 250 million euros in a network of four hubs and 1,000 delivery workers,and targets turnover of 850 million euros by 2012. Industry speculation has focused on largefreight forwarding and logistics groups, including Danish-based DSV/DFDS which is expanding itsGermany business, Rhenus and Fiege. One confirmed investor is the family of Manfred Boes, who soldhis transport firm to DSV / DFDS in 2004 and who is president of the German forwarders associationand also of FIATA, the international freight forwarders association.
