NCP steps it up
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NATIONAL CARRIERS PARCELS has begun a series of marketing exercises to win more traffic in the highly competitive parcel market. A 24-hour service, Parcelspeed, has just been extended to North-east England, and it is planning to promote Parcelstamps, a pre-payment system for smaller consignments. ALAN MILLAR reports.
Parcelspeed is a premium service based on the Medallion parcel delivery service which has been offering a 2.2-day national average delivery time since the start of this year. The delivery time applies throughout Britain and Northern Ireland.
The new service now offers 24-hour delivery in England (except Cornwall) and in South-East Wales. It provides a 48-hour service in the rest of Wales (except Anglesey), Cornwall and Southern Scotland.
Unlike the 24-hour service offered by Roadline, its sister company in the National Freight Consortium's parcels group, NCP's does not use a hub system for parcels sorting.
Parcelspeed consignments are carried on existing branch-tobranch trunking vehicles, hence its ability to offer a lower cost service.
Until now, the service has been run at a low profile, with only existing customers being offered Parcelspeed in an effort to retain existing business. But its launch in the North-East last week marks the start of a harder sell.
There are plans for other developments for NCP's services, including the possibility of something comparable with the Despatch Post garage forecourt service run by TNT Overnite. But marketing director Bernie Mason told CM that NCP is determined not to launch a large number of new products at will, as there is then a high risk of these failing.
The next major product launch will probably be Parcelstamps, a system for prepayment of the carriage of consignments of up to 70kg by booksellers and lowvolume customers.
These were introduced last November when NCP quietly closed down PBDS, the specialist book delivery subsidiary taken over from publisher Pitman in 1978. PBDS offered vouchers to booksellers returning goods on an occasional basis, and the stamps were introduced to develop this for a wider market.
They are available only from NCR's headquarters in Birmingham, and are sold in multiples of 12 with a tear-off portion which serves as a vat receipt. This system saves the low-volume customer from being sent invoices for each of their small consignments, saving both the inconvenience and the high cost that would involve.
Sales of "several thousands" of Parcelstamps are already being achieved, although they have only been promoted to the former PBDS customers and to senders of small consignments. National promotion could follow later.