 Hello everybody and welcome to this special UPU event live from Parcel and Post Expo. We have a panel of luminaries with us today. We're going to talk about some really important issues and topics surrounding our concept of partnerships without borders, which has really been a theme not just of Parcel and Post Expo over the years, but also of the opening up of the UPU Consultive Committee. And I will introduce speakers, but first of all, who am I? I'm Ian Kerr. I'm the host of the UPU Voicemail podcast, so please do subscribe to the podcast in your favourite podcast app. We're on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, other places I'm sure. Look for us in your favourite podcasting app, UPU Voicemail. This is part of our ongoing series of video events called UPU Voicemail Exchanges. So, enough about that. Let's get to our expert panel. We have, of course, immediately to my right, we have Tony Robinson, the CEO of UKI Media and the founder of Post Expo. Welcome Tony, great to have you with us. We've got Alexander Turn-Svanberg. Have I got close there with the surname? Perfect. Perfect from the UPU. Mario Eichelmann from Mail Alliance. And of course Sol Alabi from GeoMain on the end. I might ask each of you to introduce yourselves. I'll ask you a question though as a way of introduction. So Tony, for you first of all, Pass on Post Expo has been running since 1997? 1997. This is the 25th year. This is our 25th anniversary and it's a great place to be celebrating an anniversary at the show. So tell us a bit about how you came to bring the postal and parcel experts together, along with, obviously, the peak global body for the postal world, the UPU. Yeah, from our point of view, we're a transportation technology company. We're an exhibition organizer, but operating in the field of transportation, way back in 1995, we could see the posts were very early adopters of electric vehicles, which offered great advantages for delivering parcels and letters in those days, in cities, of course letters still. Silent running, the absence of pollution in cities in particular, very important. So the posts were very early adopters of electric vehicles. We were involved in another aspect of electric and hybrid vehicle design and technology with a publication that I launched back in 1995, called Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Technology International, and it became a very natural marriage of the two things. We were involved in other industry sectors which were dovetailing into the post industry as well, and it all made great sense to us. Later, as we launched the show in 1997, we then got involved after that with the Universal Postal Union, and that's been a fantastic marriage, really, between two organizations working in harmony. Now, you were our featured guest on the most recent episode of the UPU Voicemail podcast and one of the things you mentioned during our discussion was about how, I'm not going to say the show has something for everyone, but how your technical people will look at the technology, but the CEOs take a broader view. Can you just enlarge on that just a little bit, please? I think it's really important that we see that difference. Technologists are technical people. They come to this show, they sort of fundamentally know what they're looking for. They're trying to make things work together, synchronize, integrate and all that stuff, and they're technical people. CEOs and other senior board members can come to this show and look at how you can benefit from new technologies and the strategies that can come out of those technologies. The technology, and that's the beauty of the show, it is a technology showcase for the industry. The new inventions are coming out here. CEOs can look at those inventions, not as a technologist, but as strategists, and they can see, okay, what could we do here? Is this a new business opportunity that's coming out of this technology, or is it just something that will make us more efficient, do the job better, whatever? But those CEO people and senior board members, really, really important that they can see at the bigger picture level, the strategic benefits that can come out of all of these lovely new inventions. And of course, there's a great place to network and meet fellow CEOs and postal leaders, but enough about that later, as we say. Now, Alexander, Terns van Berg, you are the secretary of the UPU Consultive Committee. So, can you share with the audience what the main reasons were behind the committee's restructuring and opening up to the new private partners, and how it might even change the UPU's engagement with the wider sector? Thank you very much. Thank you. So, the changing and the opening up, or the transformation of the Consultative Committee of the UPU was actually a decision taken by the UPU Congress last year. And the engagement that the UPU is now taking with the private sector is actually unique. It's a historical moment of the life, if I can say, of the Universal Postal Union. This UN specialized agency created in 1874, for those of you who don't remember that, it's an old lady, became the UPU an agency after the Second World War and has gradually evolved over the years going through different crises, I would say, crises which the Post have gone through also, with the arrival of Internet in the 70s, e-commerce and so forth. And today is, I would say, a very special day because the Consultative Committee, yes, has been transformed and is allowing private companies to become members of the Consultative Committee. Previously, we only had designated operators who could be members. We only had non-governmental organizations and also we had industry associations. But the fact that we are opening up now to the private sector entities is a major breakthrough in our history. We are trying to create the relevance that we were actually about to lose, meaning working closer with the private sector. The UPU is and will remain relevant and the fact that we are now together working closely with the private sector is a blessing for all of us. And we have a value proposition for the private companies coming on board and we have already noted a lot of interest for incoming members to work with us. Thank you. And we're going to talk to one of those private members now. Private members, private partners, whatever the best term is, Mario Achelman, tell us, why did you decide to join, which is supposed to be the obvious question, why did you choose to join the UPU Consultative Committee and what would you expect to gain either personally as an organization out of the collaboration, even what might you even contribute? Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having us here in this line. We're really excited about it. And as Mail Alliance, we have to deal with all the today's struggle and challenges, but also with the possibilities. Partnership without borders. This means we have to work together on short ways, perfect preparation and smart standardization from shipping to the delivery port. And we all have to work on it global and together. And that's why we are thankful for the work of the UPU and we are very proud being part of it in the form of the Consultative Committee. We're taking our chance and our responsibility for that. And the postal market with focus on the e-commerce shipments from cross-border to domestic and at Mail Alliance we have everything to deal with it here in Germany. And we're excited what happened next and we're working for our opportunities. And the most important thing for us is we have a clear vision. We believe in the globalization of the postal market and a strong meaning of our postal market here in Germany. And so that's the perfect match to get these shipments and all these gentlemen and the ladies and gentlemen from the postal companies worldwide to get one standard and to do this business in line of today's technology. Because it's very advanced and we're excited being part of it. Thank you for that, Mario. And our last panelist, our fourth panelist I should say rather than last is Sol Alabi from GeoMain. And Sol, I'm going to ask you the same question really. Why join? What do you expect to contribute or get out of it? Maybe even what sort of synergies do you see between your company and what the UPU Consultative Committee does? Thank you very much. Primarily, GeoMain is a provider of a universal digital identity and the postal union with all the level of trust that basically dengenders globally is an ideal partner. We see them as an ideal launch partner for a universal digital identity. It's also something that over the course of the years we believe is going to become an absolute must for everyone to transact online and perhaps even offline. At the moment what's really happening is we have this whole digital transformation revolution going on but if you really analyze that very closely you will see that what's lacking is an individual level digital identity. So we are bringing that to the table and we feel that the UPU is a perfect and fantastic partner to launch that because having been around for centuries literally and having the kind of physical distribution network in terms of all the postal members and most of these postal members are obviously government, in most cases government owning government led. So there isn't anything comparable out there which can actually do this job any better than the UPU. So our joining the Consultative Committee, the goal here really is two falls, first and foremost to what we have developed over the last five years. We've been working on GeoMain since 2016. So we want to basically bring that out for the benefit of everybody in the world and obviously in doing that I think what's going to happen is that the UPU is going to become more and more relevant. The kind of decline we've been seeing in revenues for postal members across the world because of e-commerce and e-mails as you just mentioned. All of these are obviously challenges that the UPU has been facing but insofar as if the UPU becomes a custodian if you may of the universal digital identity then we think that that's going to be a game changer for the UPU for decades to come and we look forward to working with them on this. Thank you. Thank you Sir. You've touched on an important topic there about digital identity and sort of the overall role of the post. Possibly more than we can, we'd be biting off more than we can chew in this short session if we go too much into that but Tony I want to return to you because I like your perspective as an insider and an outsider when it comes to the postal world and one of the common themes that we've heard from our panellists just now has been this idea of cooperation between the public so the postal operators and the private operators. Tell me from your perspective is this really the key to survival of the sector and this need to be, to find functioning partnerships I suppose. I'm going to go to your first comment to begin with because sometimes when you're doing what we do as an organisation we publish magazines and we run exhibitions in certain industry sectors I sometimes see the industry as being something in a goldfish bowl and we have the opportunity rather interestingly to be able to look into the bowl and see all the fish swimming around and on the other hand the bowl, the industry it can look out and it gets a different perspective because it sees the customer on the outside of the bowl and the customer can look very different and can actually be even changed shape because the bowl creates an odd perspective you might not always understand exactly who the customer is or where the customer is going and this industry has really changed you know since 1997 I first started looking at it as I said before in about 1995 well of course the letter business was a huge huge business and the parcel delivery business was a very small business and now as we know that's completely inverted in almost all parts of the world the parcel delivery element has gone through the roof and I think it's really really important and really great to see UPU now opening the doors to the parcel delivery companies that are not part of the traditional postal community and that's really great, it's really healthy and I think it's also really healthy that the posts which are historically quite traditional sorts of businesses that often don't realise how high tech they are and I think that's a very interesting peculiarity because the posts are very high tech, very clever organisations but now encouraging them to be doing business more to bring in third party private company partners to add expertise and capability around what they're doing that is a fundamental important thing too so whichever side of the bowl you're on I think is a very very interesting period of time Alexander, Tony's compared the postal sector to a fish bowl I love sushi I would suggest it's perhaps also could be seen as an ecosystem and that the postal world is part of it the private operators are part of it so tell us a bit from your perspective is this collaboration that the UPU is facilitating through its own consultive committee this collaboration with public and private providers is it sort of a necessity do you think for the survival of the sector? For the sector that's a big thing to say but I think that the UPU as a specialised agency and intergovernmental organisation has a lot to gain from it and so does its members the members being the designated postal operators the regulators and the ministries in charge of posts the missing step stone was the private sector as I said earlier we only had industry associations and how well could they actually represent the individual members if an association has about 100 or 200,000 members so it was about time that the private companies could actually join and we see the fact that we are facilitating the contacts between them as a very healthy approach because transparency and I presume that Tony you were referring to this fishbowl as a transparent fishbowl so you could actually see through it as well right? Exactly, well we could see into it Exactly, yeah so I think it's again I'm so happy and I'm so proud to sit next to my two new CC members because they have the right attitude they have the right spirit they could be competitors and they would still sit here and talk as a matter of fact we do have competing consultative committee members among themselves and they are committed to collaborate with the consultative committee to make this a better place Mario do you want to just comment on what Alexander said there particularly how you can have potentially commercial compared to sitting next to each other and yet there's a spirit of collaboration and needing to move the whole sector forward can you just share some thoughts on that place? I guess the meaning thing is we started many years before to get this global spirit into our domestic business because me by myself we were running out in about 2018 to buy first electric cars to drive to go our postal network on a size of green logistics and we found that that's the thing global and worldwide and we have to do it powerful we have to do it smart and powerful to go into a game changer and that's why we're so happy and glad being part in the UPU consultative committee because we have all the same vision we're running our business but we're working together on it to share this knowledge everybody have and in our case it's the smallest piece of the supply chain is the regional thing because we're as Mail Alliance Germany we're running this business by ourselves we have our own splitting and sorting companies and we all have our own people for the last mile delivery but we also have 90 partners in Germany who's working with us on our label on our standard and that's why we're proud to combine this all together So maybe just a word on what was said because it's very very interesting you see Mail Alliance is like the UPU but in the domestic market of Germany so they have these 90 or 100 companies that are doing exactly the same thing as the company you were into operations today and they actually distribute, pick up and collect and distribute in the same area so they have their own remuneration system they have a lot of things that are very interesting actually to share with the UPU and the fact that they are working with competitors is a very interesting aspect So do you have anything you'd like to add on the same theme of the cooperation between competitors and even the role that your own company plays in the entire ecosystem or Goldfish Bowl as you prefer over the parcel and postal delivery world With regards to the whole competitive spirit I think that at the end of the day it is obviously beneficial for the entire ecosystem it really boils down to consumer choice at the end of the day So as Alexander said when we have competing CC members all of them working towards the same goal then I think that that is going to definitely be fundamentally beneficial to the entire postal and logistics ecosystem as it exists today With regards to our company as well we don't have any competitors as such directly in terms of what we do because we actually focus on not just the last mile but really the last meter delivery So there is some outside of the box thinking that we have done over there and obviously we would like that as people would adopt this and companies would adopt this they would basically see the value of this and if there is competition then obviously we would welcome it because it will just help us to stay on our toes Alexander I want to come back to this global perspective because one of the things about the UPU is it does have its constituent states everywhere Western Europe, South Pacific, everywhere in between Can this opening up be of benefit to every nation in the world? That's a bit of a leading question there isn't it? Let's not confuse the transformation and the opening up of the consultative committee with the opening up of the Universal Postal Union Two different topics which way down the road could end up to something a convergence but I think that broadly speaking what's happening right now we have to look at it as a matter of a seamless e-commerce journey and put the consumer and the customer in the center of what's happening that's the ultimate goal and as long as we do not talk about the customers we are off track we need to keep customer focus that's my answer to your question Very good, thank you Alexander Now let's talk about the practical considerations when it comes to the opening up of a consultive committee and the work that it does and delivering the work that it does So we've talked a little bit about finding synergies Have you identified any obstacles that need to be overcome as part of achieving this opening up and these synergies and working together? Alexander perhaps if you could start with some thoughts The first obstacle is fear when change comes around people are not used to work in a certain manner what's happening at the UPU now through the new structure of the consultive committee is that private companies will be able to interact contribute to the work of the UPU through a structure that will allow us to provide input to the work of the Postal Operations Council and the Council of Administration So of course, of course the designated postal operators are wondering what is happening is this transparent is there something fishy around this is it going to cause us harm or is it going to create problems So we are organized in a very good manner in the structure of the CC So it's just actually contributing with input to the work of the UPU in a way that actually enriches the dialogue with the designated operators That's what we're doing bringing in the private sector perspective So it's not just designated operators talking among designated operators about their problems There is another stakeholder out there called the private sector bringing them into the table have them contribute to the discussion and maybe the end of the discussion will be enriched Probably yes, absolutely yes Mario, you're nodding your head furiously there Would you like to add any comments on what Alexander has just said? For sure, I'm totally with you Alexander And I guess one of the main things we figured out we're talking a lot of trust It depends on trust in together We're so thankful for the work of UPU because today I'm sitting here as the Managing Director of Mail Alliance and we can say, hey, we're a member of UPU We're checked together, we're trained together and we have the same standardization and so we can talk about the exchange of posters in one thing because we know we have over us we have the label of the UPU and you know we're all talking about the same thing and for me it's a great issue to keep it up and up and get smarter in this process Yes, yesterday at the World Leadership Forum the chair of the Consultative Council had basically mentioned that the UPU had essentially undersold itself and I think that that's so true because if you look at everything that the UPU has and its history, right and the level of trust that it engenders in the public, it's absolutely amazing and I repeat myself in saying there isn't another organization similar to that that exists today on the planet so in bringing in the private sector what's really going to happen in my opinion is that it's really the spark that's going to set the whole thing absolutely alive the entire ecosystem because when you don't have competition we all tend to go to sleep I think that's human nature in terms of bringing in competing players from the private sector who are competing amongst themselves and now can add value to the entire UPU ecosystem I think it's probably the best thing that's happened to the UPU in the last 100 years if not more An interesting comment there Tanya that cropped up yesterday as well is this concept that perhaps the UPU has undersold itself over the years what's your perspective on that? I think it's a very healthy change that the UPU is going through and we've inevitably not only rebranded the show from being post-expo to being parcel and post-expo increasingly over the last 10 years we've had the big companies the FedExes and the UPSes and the DHLs coming to the show they're becoming more and more involved with the show the parcel bit is the big bit and I think without doing what Universal Postal Union have done by embracing the other half of the industry I've always felt that the posts deliver about half of the world's parcels and the other companies who are now being enabled to become members deliver the other half and living without that other half would be a bad thing now for those of you watching at home or at the office or while you're out and about who knows where you're watching this right now remember if you're on the Swapcard app you can ask questions and I'll pass the questions on to the panellists live that's terrifying isn't it so keep it clean everybody keep it relevant I'm sure we can trust you Alexander now that we've had a broad discussion about this concept of change and all that just can you share a little bit about how this is going to work in practice within the consultative committee because I understand there's some subdivision of the actual work that it's doing I think are they called consultative groups can you share a little bit about that please so you're talking about the structure of the consultative committee is that what you're referring to yeah so we're organized today in six thematic chapters each and one of the chapters are actually the mirror of the work that's happening in the Postal Operations Council through the Standing Working Groups and Task Force Groups and also what's happening in the Council Administration mainly from a policy and regulatory perspective so we are not bound by the six chapters but we need it to start somewhere so it's a living product and this will evolve over time there may be new chapters coming up we have already foreseen how it can grow vertically in the sense that we can have sub categories sub thematic chapters and hence for each and one of the chapters we have chapter rapporteurs or leaders if you wish and they will then be responsible for driving the work in each and one of the thematic chapters they will for all the CC members who have assigned themselves to one of the chapters as members will then contribute with their private sector perspectives and technologies and what have you experience and knowledge and a white paper or a PowerPoint presentation will be produced short thematic feedback which will then be dragged and dropped into the folders of the POC and CCA working groups so this will be the pragmatic and I would say the operational approach to contribute through the thematic chapter then of course yesterday in one of the sessions a question was asked about the academia and academia is of course not on the structure today we will immediately make sure that we get the academia into the picture as well because they will provide all the research and that set of university and think tanks and what have you that will complement and make the structure complete today we are growing and we are also offering through the thematic chapters the possibility to our members to actually get to be visible very visible you know that the POC and the CA they meet twice a year at the UPU and all those designated operators and the regulators and the ministers in charge of post are coming attending the sessions and then the CC member has got the possibility to sponsor an evening reception so they get like a lot of attention and this is also a business opportunity but it's also an opportunity to exchange and have the private sector inside the house they are part of the family now there's no way back thematic chapters you have for example there are six so we have regulatory policy we have customs we have e-commerce we have transport I don't know what that's five which one? addressing and direct marketing is the sixth one so those chapters are not bound to stay always the same they can evolve over time so no one is going to get yelled at to stay in their lane or anything like that Mario can you just share a little bit about the thematic chapter that you are involved in and is there anything that you are allowed to share at this early stage about the kind of work that your chapter might be undertaking one thing is the technology today is advanced and one thing for us is we are really looking forward to bring our part in the complete thing in the IT section to get it smooth and get it smart and get it quick the quick exchange of data that's one thing we are using and we are working for in the UPU so all the same question for you you need to comment on some of the work that your chapter, your thematic chapter how big you pardon is doing we belong to the addressing chapter and the goal here basically where Geoman is to assign every individual with a digital address that's the solution that we are bringing on the table and we look forward to working with the UPU to basically help us to roll this out globally in conjunction with all the postal partners all over the world the post offices again obviously the post offices being the natural and the most logical a partner that has the capability and the cloud to do this getting that global address data is hugely important in the world of cross-border e-commerce I could talk about that for another hour but we've got a question that's coming from Swapcard so remember if you're watching this at home or at the office or from your home office or from your office which is actually your home because you spend so much time there at Swapcard asking questions there and I will ask it of our esteemed panel the question is this is from Alfredo who says how do you think the marketplaces should partner with the UPU or join now that's a great question the marketplaces who's our volunteer to answer that one Alex Andrews just to start yes thank you we welcome the marketplaces to the UPU they should come they should sign up and they should work with us we welcome them to join and actually we will need them because they will contribute a lot and we will be able to benefit from their experience their expertise and we may have some solutions for them for very tricky market situations in areas of the world where the market might not be like in Europe, North America or other places in Asia for instance the African market is the next double or triple digit what do you call it growth market so I think we're very keen on working on that so we welcome all these marketplaces quickly and they can just call me and send me an email and I'll be there and respond to them I feel like we should put Alexander's phone number underneath this video feed call Alexander now or ring this number and ask to speak to Alexander anyway tiny marketplaces just by the by this is a huge thing isn't it I shop on Amazon I'll happily admit that everybody I'll confess I shop on Amazon so what what are you going to do about it anyway I shop on Amazon but the second hand marketplaces are a huge growth market the marketplaces be a growth market just between you and me and everybody watching at home have you ever shopped on any of those second hand marketplaces Tony like Vinted or Wallopop or OLX what are the other ones I can't think of any others I'm glad to say we do have people here from eBay and I guess eBay is one of the founding companies of the second hand marketplace online everything's changing very rapidly and you know I think when I did a podcast with you a while back not long ago I was talking about the parcel delivery industry being in a bit of a wild west condition and really by that I mean it's easy to not realise this sort of quantum shift that's happened with parcels parcels were delivered as we well know 50 years ago more but now parcels are being delivered by the millions of items and that's a big big shift so I see things going wrong and we all see things going wrong we order a knife and fork and it turns up in a huge box we see various situations going on to do with I think over quick delivery speeds instead of consolidated deliveries and I think that's a really important part of the whole process of sustainability and actually using giant boxes and wasting materials and using not very good materials it's all going to be part of the growing up process the second hand market it's a fabulous part of the world and all part of the business I think it's interesting how the internet and app driven marketplaces have made it dare I say it's seamless by the trading post or pick up loot something like that to engage in the second hand marketplace but Tony you've just made a couple of hugely important points there about things like packaging, efficiency of delivery and topics like this Alexander these are sorts of topics that are going to be part of the conversation with the private players inside of this new look if that's the right word, consultive council structure absolutely and it's going to be actually critical that those topics come up to the surface because it's impossible that the posts have got all this knowledge by themselves the kind of research and investments that are required are just too big for any post in the world actually so all these topics will come up to the surface something that I would like to point out since you talked about the marketplaces coincidentally Amazon reached out to us and had a meeting with us this morning and I think sooner than later they will be joining the consultive committee and that's only a matter of time before all the big companies will come in because they start understanding that things are happening at the UPU and if we have startups joining already sector players in the cross-border e-commerce it's going to be an amazing set for exchange for growth together and making the customer journey unique and seamless so it's just I would be more than happy to actually give your phone numbers so if you are interested reach out to my colleague here and friend and then no over to you another trend for us to look out for when we are talking about membership of the consultive committee the marketplaces of course is the global shipping companies, the likes of MASC who are getting into the last mile and are creating vertically integrated companies so they will be the next ones Ring Alexander on 1-800-Call Alexander I'm sorry I don't know the number but getting in contact with Alexander at the UPU gentlemen let's just one of the topics we were just talking about was the importance of sustainability and efficiencies in the last mile one of the big topics is there any thoughts you can share on this and the work that you are doing or any comments at all on how we in the delivery world can either reduce packaging as Tony said or be more efficient in the last mile to minimize our impact on the environment Yes for sure and the journey we are all on is a clean mix on the classic postal and now the parcel world so we are on the last mile delivery and we have a great shape in this and the part is we have to deal with the big volume of marketplaces and also it allows us to support some newcomer in business and that's our splitting on last mile delivery it's the key point to work on synergy to get it more efficiency and work for the economy Yes research indicates that the last mile delivery component in terms of cost is about 52% and that's huge if you look at it and a lot of the times the reason why that cost component is so high is primarily because people are not available addresses are wrong people have moved on and that results as you can imagine in the delivery man going around looking for an address that doesn't exist address integrity issues so all of these issues are absolutely fundamental that we have to solve if we want to basically make work towards a more greener world and I'm very happy to say once again that GeoMain basically addresses a lot of these issues some of the studies basically that have been done indicate that there is efficiency enhancement of up to 15% when a GPS is used as a coordinate for a delivery location so we look forward obviously to working with all the with the UPU as well as all the members of the Consultative Council the private sector as well to help them adopt technology that is going to help all of us to have a greener world and Alexandra building on what we've just heard one of the questions that comes up from time to time is how can you make technology and solutions accessible to those last mile operators let's say a small post that might not have a huge budget might not have the really deep pockets can you see the work that we're doing here we the UPU is doing here with all these new partners being able to contribute to those smaller operators via the appropriate channels having access to some of these technologies and solutions yes so you see the way we work today inside the Consultative Committee will also open up the door for small posts in developing the least developed countries to benefit from all these technology efficiencies why? simply because we are running a cooperation development project at the UPU we are helping and we have always done that at the UPU the least developed posts out there and sometimes we have projects where we now will be able to also approach the post from a different angle bringing in our Consultative Committee members expertise because they are now part of the family and if there is a particular post in a poor country who needs assistance whether it is in last mile delivery or addressing or whatever some of these projects of course we will approach our Consultative Committee members and ask them is there a way we can help this post to actually become more efficient become more efficient in terms of carbon footprint and so forth and this is going to be a game changer because they are here of course for the business but they are also here to contribute to the UPU as a system as a backbone for everybody to play on we are almost out of time so I will ask you all to collect your thoughts and share with just a few thoughts again on the broader concept this idea of partnerships without borders and the opening up of the Consultative Committee to the private partners and also the state more broadly speaking of the delivery world and the partnerships that we are seeing Tony if I may start with you you have certainly set the conversation going with your comments on packaging there is there any final comments from you on this idea of partnerships without borders in this globalised world? No I think it is all about the integration I think there is a lot of stuff to be done to improve the way this huge industry works and it is very easy to fail to recognise quite how big the post and parcel deliveries industries are when I first started looking into the goldfish bowl as I referred to earlier on one of the things that I found was that in almost every country in the world the biggest fleet of vehicles was operated by the post and now actually if you look at the parcel delivery community as well the biggest fleets of the vehicles that are being used around the world are being operated either by the post or the parcel delivery companies a lot of people never noticed that I think it was DHL that became one of the top 10 airlines in the world just because of the huge amount of stuff that they are delivering all over the place so you know this is a huge industry in terms of words like sustainability this industry has a huge impact and the more we get productive development and cooperation between the various communities whether they are private or public that is only going to be a good thing and you have touched on the idea of the social role of the post that is hugely important isn't it the post is often one of the biggest employers in the country we should never overlook that the role of the post as an employer and a provider of effectively a social benefit for the people however possibly a topic for another day Alexander your final thoughts please you are absolutely right the post is one of the biggest employers in the country one of the biggest jobs is the small and medium sized companies around the world and part of the UPU strategy and mission is also of course to work very closely with the small and medium sized companies and in my other responsibility of managing the donor relations and resource mobilization at the UPU I am reaching out to all the big banks the world bank the institutional donors if you wish and also companies like Visa, Mastercard Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation etc etc so the approach with the banks is to actually collect resources to implement big regional projects for post currently we are discussing with a big large bank in Central America and the Costa Rica Post they have recently received funding to renew their fleet of vehicles to clean vehicles they have also received funding from this very same bank it's a solar panel project to reduce their carbon footprint because obviously in many countries where it's very hot they use a lot of electricity for the ACs so there is also an approach that we have to work very closely to facilitate cross-border e-commerce for small and medium-sized companies to make that their journey seamless. Thank you and Mario some final thoughts for you on this concept of partnerships without borders yes of course this is all set and one thing is look at Germany there are 55,000 people working for mail alliance to do in their job and we're benchmarked by the worldwide industry and so we're in collaboration and every day we're on to getting smarter getting cleaner, getting faster and that's what we're doing and tell me that's with passion we love it and Sol some final thoughts from you please as somebody who's been in technology for north of 20 years what I really think is going to happen is that over a period of time the UPU will perhaps evolve into becoming one of the biggest SaaS players where services by a whole variety of private sector players can be made available to all postal partners and vice versa basically over the internet and I think that in becoming a major SaaS player there's going to be tremendous benefits to the end consumer as we talked earlier keeping the customer in the center that has to be the focus and at the same time it's going to bring economies of scale because you're talking about a huge, huge volume that's going to be delivered over the SaaS and certainly it's going to be something that is yet again going to strengthen the UPU so we look forward to that well I'd like to thank our four panellists today Tony Robertson, UK media and events founder of PostExpo as it then was past on PostExpo the 25th the 25th edition or 25th anniversary this year 25th anniversary 25th anniversary Alexander Tenz Sonberg I'm doing this without my glasses everybody I'm reading it off a phone cut me some slack alright from the UPU thank you very much for your comments today Mario Eichelmann from Mail Alliance thank you all very much those of you watching at home please give us a virtual round of applause for our panellists and remember you can subscribe to the UPU voicemail podcast the most recent episode was an interview with Tony Robertson here talking about the evolution of the postal sector over the last 25 years along with some personal observations from Tony well worth a listen so please do subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcast platform and even in podcast platforms you're not that fond of my mind as long as you subscribe that'd be great my thanks as always to the UPU team for putting to this event and to Andy and the entire crew at UKI for making us look beautiful on television thank you very much enjoy the rest of your day and take it easy everybody alright