Deutsche Post World Net announced yesterday that it acquired a majority interest in Koba, a direct marketing and business mail solutions provider based in Chilly-Mazarin, France.
Koba is also a partner of La Poste, the French postal service. It moves presorted mail from companies with a high advertising volume to La Poste for final delivery.
Deutsche Post did not disclose the value of the transaction.
Koba generated about $67 million in revenue in 2003 and has 500 employees. It has six production facilities in France. Its largest clients include Air France, the bank Credit Agricole, German retail and distribution giant Metro and mail-order firm Quelle.
Deutsche Post World Net is active in the cross-border mail business worldwide and is represented in domestic mail markets such as the United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain.
Also, Deutsche Post said yesterday that it planned to sell its 24.8 percent stake in trans-o-flex, Weinheim, Germany, a mixed freight delivery services provider.
Deutsche Post also said this month that DHL — an express delivery service company owned by Deutsche Post — will change its parcel and small-package prices in Germany. Starting Jan. 1, the cost of shipping small packages within Germany will increase 4.9 percent while standard parcels weighing up to 11 pounds will rise 4.5 percent.
DHL's e-parcel service, which lets shipments weighing up to 69.3 pounds be ordered on the Internet, will be unaffected.
Also starting Jan. 1, DHL will let its residential customers in Germany track their parcels on the Internet. Currently, only DHL's business customers can use this service.
Melissa Campanelli covers postal issues for DM News.com. To keep up with the latest postal news subscribe to our free e-mail newsletter DM News Daily by visiting http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/newslettersub.cgi
