Yamato Transport, the leading parcels carrier in Japan, will restructure into a holding companyon November 1 with its parcels and other businesses run as separate subsidiaries. The new parent
company will be called Yamato Holdings Co. Ltd, while the parcels company will take the name YamatoTransport Co. Ltd.The listed Japanese group aims to speed up decision-making and increase shareholder value as aresult of the restructuring which is part of a three-year development plan. Its businesses –parcels, supply chain management, home services, e-business services and financial services – willhave more freedom to develop independently in future.
Yamato, the long-standing Japanese market leader, claims to have a 37 per cent share of theJapanese domestic parcel market, ahead of Sagawa Express (34 per cent), Nippon Express (12 percent), Fukuyama Transporting (10 per cent) and Seino Transportation (5 per cent). But it now facescompetition in the private customer sector from Japan Post which launched its low-price Yu-Packproduct in October 2004.
In the financial year ending March 31, 2005, Yamato had operating revenues of 1.07 trillion yen($9.98 billion), an operating profit of 51.2 billion yen and a net profit of 33.8 billion yen ($315million). Volumes in the dominant parcels business grew by 5.2 per cent to nearly 1.1 billionparcels and revenues increased to 867 billion yen.
Under the company’s medium-term plan until 2008, operating revenues are targeted to grow 21 percent to 1.3 trillion yen. The main parcels business should grow by 14 per cent to revenues of 1.06trillion yen and logistics by 63 per cent to 225 billion yen.
