NEC parcels wor
Page 7
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
EMPLOYEES' worries about the National Freight Consortium's commitment to its loss-making parcels operation boiled over at last Saturday's NFC annual general meeting. ALAN MILLAR reports.
NFC parcels group managing director Steve Abel was the only one of the five directors seeking re-election at the meeting who encountered even a token of opposition to keeping his post, although he was re-elected by an overwhelming majority.
Mr Abel had reminded fellow shareholder/workers that the Roadline and National Carriers Parcels operations lost £4.5m against an optimistic budget of only a Et 3m loss in 1982/83, and forecast a trading loss of £2,4m in the current year.
The sales force was being doubled, and an additional E200,000 had been devoted to a sales campaign, but he said the two companies would remain as separate as possible as this was the lowest cost option available to NFC.
NFC chairman Sir Peter Thompson added that the par cels market was "like a jungle" and said: "it is not for the want of effort that those figures were produced."
But this was insufficient to appease some of the parcels company shareholders present, and one NCP representative from Warrington called for more emphasis on British investment by NFC than in foreign businesses like NFC's Dovvnard-Pickfords in Australia.
Sir Peter pointed out that only £1.5m of the £75m to E80m invested by NFC last year had been spent overseas, but warned that major investment in the parcels business could only follow its recovery. "The parcels operation has got to pull itself up by its own bootstraps."
Mr Abel, who pointed out that major depot facilities like TNT's recently opened Atherstone hub in Warwickshire had cost E10m to build, suggested that sophisticated handling systems would not necessarily help NFC.
He said that a recent survey by Roadline had indicated that sack barrows were more efficient movers of parcels in depots than new handling systems. This brought an impromptu cry of "rubbish" from one of the 1,800plus shareholders present.