Other News (archive)

20 December 2012 – Notre Dame Cathedral will celebrate its 850th birthday in 2013. The Paris landmark will get nine new bells for that occasion. The largest bell, named Marie, was forged this year in the Netherlands by the Royal Eijsbouts company, one of few foundries who can achieve the desired sound quality. She weighs 6.5 tons and has a diameter of 2.06 meters. Forging the bell required melting 850 bronze bricks of 10 kilos each. French, Belgian and Dutch bishops witnessed the production in action last September. TNT Express will today truck the Marie bell from Asten, the Netherlands, to the French foundry company Cornille-Harvard in Villedieu-les-Poêles, Normandy, France. She will reach her destination on Friday 21 December at 11:00 a.m. The Marie bell will later be installed in the south tower of Notre Dame.

8 October 2012 – TNT Express has been awarded “Road Supplier of the Year” 2012 by CEVA, one of the world’s leading supply chain management companies. Launched in 2011, the Global Supplier Awards are designed to recognise best practice and excellence among CEVA’s supplier base worldwide. The awards ceremony was held end September in Ontigola, Spain. On this occasion, Bruno Sidler, CEVA’s Chief Operating Officer said: “TNT’s approach is customer focused. They have taken their wide range of services and solutions and invested time and money to make sure they are efficient and meeting our business needs.  As a global organisation whose footprint matches our own, TNT has ensured a consistent level of service wherever we have worked with them in the past year.” In addition to the Road Supplier of the Year award, seven other suppliers were recognised as category winners at the award ceremony.

5 July 2012 - TNT is to be the first express delivery company to trial new longer trailers on UK roads as part of its daily operations. The 15.65-metre trailers – two metres longer than the standard semi trailers currently in use – will allow TNT Express to carry a 15% greater payload, significantly improving its efficiency and capabilities for customers.

The trailers will be introduced on TNT’s route between its main UK hub at Kingsbury, in Staffordshire, and the Llantrisant depot in Mid-Glamorgan, Wales.  The trial is part of a Government initiative within the transport and logistics industry, which authorises the use of longer trailers for the next 10 years.

"In days of high fuel prices, these innovative, modern trailers offer exceptional loading capacity and space utilisation to keep freight costs down to a minimum," said Simon Harper, Director of Operations TNT Express Services UK & Ireland. “With bigger loads on each vehicle, we will cover fewer miles per volume of parcels which will help with fuel consumption and reduce our CO₂ emissions," added Simon.

The trailers incorporate other innovative features to further reduce tyre wear and fuel usage such as the ability to raise the centre axle which only deploys if the load weight on either of the other two axles exceeds 90% of the permitted axle load of 9 tonnes.

The redesigned packaging range will be integrated into the TNT sales proposition and progressively replace TNT’s current packaging worldwide.