A recent independent UNEX study reveals that Deutsche Post World Net remains one of the mail transit time leaders in Europe, with over 97.1% of the letters processed by the Group in the first half of 2004 reaching their recipients abroad within three days of posting at a mail centre.
Deutsche Post achieved particularly good transit times for Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and Denmark. On average, shipments are delivered to their recipients in these countries just two days after posting at a German mail centre.
Overall, the European postal companies attained very good results for the first half of 2004 in the study. The average transit time in Europe was 2.2 days. A total of 93.8% of cross-border, inner-European letters were delivered within three days of posting at one of the mail centres belonging to the postal companies tested. Transit times for the first six months of this year were thus 8.8% higher than the EU standard of 85%. In comparison to 1994, when measurements began, the current results represent an improvement of 24.3%.
The share of inner-European shipments that reach their destination with five days of posting at a mail centre has also improved slightly, and, at 98.3%, exceeds the EU target of 97%.
The UNEX (Unipost External Monitoring System) study is conducted twice a year on behalf of the International Post Corporation (IPC) to which 23 internationally operating postal companies belong.* By mid-2004, more than one million test letters in different formats and sizes had been sent in 306 country-to-country relations in Europe and 400 city-to-city relations within and between North America and Europe for study purposes.
*The following countries are members of the IPC: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.S.A
