Australia Post’s managing director, Graeme John, foresees cutbacks on flights and a shift towardssea and rail deliveries with regard to the annual meeting of the Kahala Posts Group last week. As
chairman of the meeting that took place in Queensland, Australia, John expressed his concerns aboutsoaring greenhouse emissions and global warming negatively impacting the international freightindustry, the Australian newspaper Brisbane Times reported.John said that said growth in international freight from consumer goods such as electronicshad been managed on a “just in time” basis, with air delivery preferred to other means of transportdue to its speed advantage. But that approach was no longer viable as global warming would have anenormous influence on the postal industry worldwide increasing the pressure to shift towards lessenvironmentally-damaging modes of delivery. “One of the challenges in international logistics isgoing to be greenhouse emissions,” he added.
The Kahala Posts Group (KPG) which is the alliance of nine national postal administrations inAustralia, the United States, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Spain, France and Britain, was foundedfive years ago and named after a resort the members stayed at during their founding meeting inHawaii. The postal operators have since launched an upgraded, guarantee-based international servicebetween their respective countries and territories.
The consortium was created to help the countries compete with private freight companies butconceded it could not keep up with major private companies such as DHL, UPS or FedEx in terms ofspeed.
Therefore, Kahala Group focused instead on reliability of delivery. But to keep thereliability of the service, the Kahala members had to upgrade their tracking systems. It alsorequired the creation of a “delivery calculator”, a database of eight billion postcodes that allowsa customer to walk into any postal outlet, list their destination and be told a precise time windowduring which a parcel would be delivered, Brisbane Times further reported.
While the private couriers already offered that service and faster delivery, the Kahalamembers undercut their prices by 40% to 50% to stay competitive in price.
John further said that 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 theUS Postal Service preparing to launch a group-owned money transfer service to compete againstWestern Union, Brisbane Times added.
