EMS Service to France and Singapore

Holds board meeting in Japan to admit two countries as KPG members offering date-certain, guaranteed EMS service

An international alliance of eight national postal administrations, including Korea Post, is expanding into a 10-member global network offering date-certain, guaranteed international Express Mail Service (EMS) at some 176,000 postal offices in 10 countries.
Kahala Posts Group (KPG), a collaborative network of the postal administrations of Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, held its board meeting in Kyoto, Japan, on July 8 and decided to add France and Singapore to the list of KPG member countries providing date-certain, guaranteed EMS service, said Song Kwan-ho, the chief of the International Business Division at Korea Post under the umbrella of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. The EMS service to France and Singapore will be made available from 2010 at the earliest, he said.
The expansion of KPG's membership is growing into the world's largest express mail integrated network with delivery to 328 million addresses and 16 billion postal code combinations. KPG was established in 2003 with the United States taking the initiative and South Korea playing a leading role with the goal of inaugurating an integrated network to make its EMS service a competitive one. With six founding members, KPG has seen steady growth. In December 2006, KPG welcomed Correos-Y-Telegrafos and the Royal Mail Group, the national postal administrations of Spain and the United Kingdom, respectively.
KPG accounts for half of the world's total EMS traffic. KPG's EMS service market, which had traffic of 25 million EMS mails last year, has grown at an annual rate of about 10 percent.
Korea Post President Namgung Min said, "Korea marks the 30th anniversary of offering date-certain, guaranteed EMS service, and with the expansion of the service to include France and Singapore, SMEs exporting products to these countries will be able to save much on costs."
KPG's member countries discussed ways of ensuring fast customs clearance for mail and building a customer satisfaction system at the 2009 annual meeting. They also discussed a strategy to attract new KPG member countries to expand the area in which date-certain, guaranteed EMS service is available.
In a related development, Korea Post President Namgung held talks with Norio Kitamura, chairman and CEO of Japan Post Service Co. and discussed the launch of maritime postal services between the two countries.
Namgung reportedly made a point that the two countries' joint efforts to develop maritime postal services would not only enhance customers' convenience, but also create new "blue ocean" markets.
A Korea Post delegation visited Japan this past April and proposed the introduction of new maritime postal services between Korea and Japan and joint efforts to improve the EMS service.
The topics the Korea Post CEO and his Japanese counterpart discussed may have included Korea Post's proposal to collaborate on making postal services "greener," a source familiar to the matter said. Korean and Japanese postal authorities have turned to aggressive low-carbon, green growth policies as Korea Post recently pledged to make postal services environmentally-friendly and Japan has begun to manufacture recyclable EMS boxes. The two countries are expected to concur on the development of green postal products, according to the source. nw

CEOS of the members of the Kahala Posts Group pose at its board meeting in Kyoto, Japan on July 8.