UPS aims to expand its presence in France which it sees as the most important express market inEurope, according to the French publication Transports Actualités.
Laurent Naidon, Marketing Director, France and Benelux at UPS, told the magazine: “Our marketshare in France is small and we want to become a far more important player here.” The company doesnot disclose revenue figures at a country level.
He stressed that the company’s network in France is not sufficient to carry out next-daydeliveries before 8 or 9am as it was primarily developed to transport international shipments. “Wehandle as many domestic shipments as we can, it works fine and we earn money. But we cannot expandcapacity without modifying our transport structure,” he admitted.
To strengthen its position in France, UPS plans to open new branches and use road transportationmore extensively as it is better suited for some routes than air transport.
In terms of the time schedule, Naidon explained that UPS is working on the plans but the changescould take several years to be implemented. He stressed, however, that the change shouldn’t taketoo long. The modification of the transport plan is expected to boost the development ofinternational express to be integrated into a combined product range offering domestic,international and logistics services. This is also in view of the company’s strategy to increaseits warehousing capacity.
Faced with what appears to be a productivity problem, Naidon said that the integratedorganisation of the UPS network provides a solution allowing preparation of consolidated shipmentsat production sites in Asia in a way that they can be distributed to destinations without problemsin a network of ‘small packages’.
UPS France will thus remain a parcel provider but the average weight handled should increase. “In Europe, we only transport pallets to the UK and Poland. In France, there exists a market fortransporting pallets and we are not there. In terms of express, however, we had to deal with theconsequences of the maximum weight of 30 kg for parcels established through the marketing ofexpress operators although the limit for UPS has been 70 kg since 1986. We face competition fromparcel operators providing guaranteed delivery times with which shippers can transport parcelsweighing over 30 kg. This will probably be the transport method that UPS France will try toestablish with its future domestic network that will handle more shipments in multiple packages,”Naidon concluded.
