Postal operators in Asia Pacific have launched the ‘APP ePacket’ service as a regional solution for delivery of small and light e-commerce goods.
The new service was agreed by the Asia Pacific Post Cooperative (APP), a regional grouping of 27 postal organisations, and officially signed during the APP CEO Forum in Seoul this week. Kim Kee-deok, President of Korea Post, commented: “The launch of the APP ePacket service will lay the foundation for the future growth of the e-commerce market in the Asia Pacific region.”
The new APP ePacket is designed to offer customers, especially e-merchants and business customers, an economical shipping solution for items weighing up to 2kg within the Asia Pacific region. The key product features include tracking, monitoring of service quality and affordable pricing but not signature on delivery. Pricing is based on a multilateral rate per kg but participants can agree bilateral rates.
The new regional parcel service will be launched by most postal operators in the region in the final quarter of this year while some others will provide it from the first quarter of 2016 onwards.
The service specifications have been developed to ensure close alignment with the UPU’s ECOMPRO parcel service and the reporting platform will be developed by the UPU’s Postal Technology Centre.
It also ties in with the current series of UPU regional strategy meetings which have highlighted e-commerce as one of the top priorities for postal operators, including in Asia Pacific, in the years to come.
