POSTNET BRINGS FOREIGN PAPERS TO YOUR DOOR

Johannesburg—Devoted newspaper readers will no longer have to wait a day to get hold of the latest copy of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, thanks to a distribution and printing partnership between Canadian-based NewspaperDirect and local delivery company PostNet.

Yesterday NewspaperDirect said it had teamed with PostNet, a subsidiary of JSE-listed OneLogix, to distribute more than 400 international newspapers from countries such as China, Russia, the US and the UK.

The titles also include the International Herald Tribune, The Times of London, The Daily Telegraph, Le Monde, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mainichi Shimbun, The Washington Post, USA Today, the Daily Mail, El Pais, Clarin, South China Morning Post and The Sydney Morning Herald.

According to Cindi Reyhardt, PostNet's strategic business unit manager for document solution, the partnership was prompted by South Africa's status as a preferred tourist destination as well as the 2010 soccer World Cup, which is expected to attract thousands of foreign visitors.

She said the deal would eliminate late arrivals of some international titles especially from the US and Australia, which have a different time zone from South Africa.

"There are a lot of foreigners living in South Africa and thousands visiting the country everyday. Those people want to get in touch with what is happening back home, preferably in their own language."

About 20 PostNet outlets in Natal, Port Elizabeth, East London and Cape Town are equipped with necessary machines to download the newspapers from NewspaperDirect press service website, print them on a tabloid or broadsheet format as they would originally appear, and deliver them to customers.

Reyhardt said the company used paper that was similar to the paper used by newspapers "to make it look authentic".

The cost for each newspaper would range between R45 and R65.

The service would also be rolled out in 10 more stores in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and the Western Cape. PostNet has more than 200 stores nationally.

Chris Wheeler, the managing director and co-founder of PostNet, said that the partnership also "provides a unique new revenue stream to our franchisees".

Reyhardt would not reveal the cost of rolling out the equipment as these were incurred by individual PostNet franchisees.

But PostNet had negotiated the terms and conditions of the partnership on behalf of the franchisees, she said.

NewspaperDirect chief executive Alex Kroogman said the partnership would allow customers to get their "favourite newspaper hot of the press".

NewspaperDirect was formed in 1999 and has operations in at least 85 countries.

Thabiso Mochiko

Published on the web by Business Report on October 18, 2006.
© Business Report 2006. All rights reserved.