Royal Mail Partnership for Chinese Imports to EU
Get ready for more competition from Chinese online retailers. Royal Mail Group has announced that GLS, its European parcels business, is forming an alliance with ZJS Express, one of the leading Chinese express companies. The partnership will provide a new, fully tracked, business-to-business parcel delivery service from China to Europe, including the UK.
GLS will provide a gateway for Chinese exporters to Europe with its service delivery platform and logistics technology. ZJS will become a GLS global partner, bringing China-wide coverage and local knowledge. The association will trade in China as Euro Business Parcel, a GLS established service brand. Parcelforce Worldwide will act as its UK delivery arm. Euro Business Parcel has a maximum weight band of 50kg.
ZJS Express has an extensive network covering more than 2,000 villages, towns and cities throughout the People’s Republic of China. The collaboration aims to enable ZJS Express to build on its weekly 7-day collection domestic offering to enable its customers to reach European partners.
Euro Business Parcel aim to provide value-for-money, express services for less time sensitive items with delivery typically between 3 and 5 business days from China to Europe, including end-to-end tracking from collection through to delivery. The China to rest of the world delivery market is largely made up of high-premium express delivery providers offering delivery within two to three days.
Parcels for Europe will be distributed by airfreight to London or Frankfurt via the major trading centres of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Tamebay Take
This could be good for you if you’re importing stock from China in smaller quantities and aren’t ready to start using container import services.
This could be bad for you if it results in more competition from Chinese suppliers listing directly on marketplaces or targetting consumers from Chinese retailer websites, with marketplaces being the most serious threat.
Gerry007 says
1:32 pm on 15/08/2012
.
2 Comments:
2x purchases from CHINA lost in Post recently.
It really is about time RM sorted out the INR problems in their network, before taking on more.
Cambridge_Blue says
11:55 pm on 15/08/2012
Completely agree.
The sneaky changes to business mail compensation mean 1st & 2nd class PPI now completely at your risk and RM not even bothering to measure these losses says it all.
Even the expensive tracked service is having problems with too many items being clicked as delivered but ‘left’ and not in an agreed safe place so compensation claims are on the rise as we get more ‘denial of receipt’ issues with customers.
In addition standard parcels compensation levels have been gutted so its Courier or ParcelForce so no more economy shipping outside of the UK mainland post codes.
You do begin to wonder at the masterplan our imported Canadian CEO is working from but given the money she is paid what can possibly go wrong for the UK’s highest paid civil servant!
pip pip
Darren says
9:26 pm on 18/08/2012
More Chinese crap into uk…great.
teebag republic says
1:15 pm on 21/08/2012
I always use UPS if I get anything from China. Never had any problems although you do pay a premium.
And Darren, pretty much everything is made in China these days, sorry to break the news to you.