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20.07.2020
By the 20th July 2020 Latvijas Pasts has already accepted 165 postal item transit cargo charter aircraft from China, processing and forwarding items from the world’s second largest trading platform Alibaba to various recipient countries in cooperation with Cainiao, a logistics company of Alibaba Group. In the last two months Latvijas Pasts has served an average of 23 transit cargo aircraft per month, which is 6.6 times or over 550% per month more than in each month of the entire previous cooperation period since August 2017.
Although the crisis caused by COVID-19 has made it difficult to receive transit items since the beginning of 2020 and the flow of these items has been significantly reduced, it has intensified rapidly in the last two months, with Latvijas Pasts serving an average of 23 transit aircraft per month, which is a substantial growth of 6.6 times or 550% compared to the monthly average before. In July Riga International Airport accepted the 200th cargo charter aircraft of the airline Atran, Cainiao’s cooperation partner, and approximately 80% of the cargo from the flights operated by it were transit postal items addressed to Latvijas Pasts.
Mārcis Vilcāns, Chairman of the Board of Latvijas Pasts, points out: “We are pleased that we have managed to become an essential and valued part of the international logistics system of Cainiao, a company of the global trading giant Alibaba Group. To do this, we had to revise our internal processes, establish a secure and efficient data exchange system and invest in technology and staff in order to demonstrate our competence, flexibility and ability to process and deliver items really quickly. We succeeded, but the work on process improvement does not stop for a moment, and in cooperation with Cainiao we are already planning to attain new goals, promoting both the growth of Latvijas Pasts performance indicators and a positive impact on Latvia’s total transit item volumes and Riga International Airport’s cargo turnover.”
The inbound postal item transit cargo of Latvijas Pasts in the structure of the cargo handled by Riga International Airport accounted for 6.7% in 2019.
“The development of cargo transportation is one of the strategic goals of Riga International Airport, and it has been a focus of our attention in recent years, both in terms of developing cargo infrastructure and facilitating the entry of cargo carriers in the airport. Cargo transportation is one of the segments that allow the airport to maintain stability at a time when passenger traffic has declined substantially as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. The programme for direct regular e-commerce air cargo transportation from China is a successful example of efficient and well-thought-out cooperation between all parties involved – the airline Atran, Latvijas Pasts and state institutions, which strengthens economic cooperation between Latvia and China and opens new logistics opportunities for the airport,” Artūrs Saveļjevs, Member of the Board of Riga International Airport, says.
Latvijas Pasts initiated cooperation with Alibaba Group, accepting the first postal item transit cargo charter aircraft in August 2017. Since 2017 Latvijas Pasts has handled 165 transit cargo airplanes, significantly expanding the range of recipient countries to which items handled in transit are forwarded from Latvijas Pasts. The items received from China at Latvijas Pasts are processed and efficiently sorted according to recipient countries, while ensuring extensive, high-quality and secure data exchange processes between the parties involved.
Continuing the development of the transit postal item project, Latvijas Pasts pursues work on offering new services to business partners in order to ensure increasingly optimal delivery of e-commerce goods. Active work is ongoing to improve logistics efficiency and data quality solutions and enhance collaboration with the customs and other authorities concerned.
In 2018 Latvijas Pasts received recognition of the World Customs Organization for the provision of exceptional services to the international customs community and the Award for Consentaneous Team Work & Effective Supporting within the transit project from Cainiao, a company of Alibaba Group.
About SJSC Latvijas Pasts
Latvijas Pasts ensures the widest availability of postal services throughout Latvia by maintaining more than 600 post offices. The primary function of the company is provision of the universal postal service; Latvijas Pasts also provides commercial transport, express mail, payment, press subscription, retail and philatelic services. Latvijas Pasts is a wholly State-owned company with over 3,400 employees. The quality measurements of Latvijas Pasts domestic mail deliveries are regularly conducted by Kantar TNS, one of the leading market, social and media research agencies in Latvia. In turn, the quality measurements of the cross-border deliveries are provided within the framework of the International Post Corporation through the intermediary of the research companies Kantar TNS, Ipsos and Quotas.
Additional information:
Gundega Vārpa | Head of External Communications
E-mail: pr@pasts.lv; gundega.varpa@pasts.lv
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