Monthly Archives: June 2022

Historically, FedEx would deliver millions of parcels deep into the postal infrastructure for the Postal Service to provide last-mile delivery to residences. FedEx changed its strategy in an effort to build package density in its business-to-consumer (B2C) ground delivery network and set the stage for seven-day-a-week deliveries, which it now offers.

At its peak, FedEx tendered about 3 million parcels per day to the Postal Service for last-mile deliveries.

The FedEx Economy contract-only service offers deliveries within two to seven business days depending on the length of haul to the destination.

The inflationary environment in North America has continued to impact the ink industry. Global geopolitical events have caused sustained pressure on logistics availability and have increased the costs to unprecedented levels. The constrained accessibility to labour in the market has driven significant wage inflation while contributing to inefficiencies at manufacturing facilities.

Key raw materials continue to experience scarcity while steel shortages drive costs for steel drums and other packaging components to historic highs. Sun Chemical continues to seek mitigation strategies to these cost increases, but, the magnitude and speed of increases require further action to offset impacts to the business.

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Postal Service released a breakdown of Undeliverable-as-Addressed (UAA) from 1998-2021 by mail class from 1998-2021.

The comprehensive data shows how well USPS and mailer efforts succeeded in limiting undeliverable mail. Since 1998 mailers have seen direct and indirect costs for complying with numerous move update regulations.

So, how successful have UAA efforts been?

Read the data here.

Most organizations run several print jobs every day. Though they may sort each job by zip code, few companies can sort the data for an entire day’s mail and create one giant print stream. Jobs are ready for printing at different times and companies can’t wait until the end of the day to start printing. Also, print applications use different paper stock, outbound envelopes, and return envelopes or inserts. Document operations must process the jobs separately to accommodate this variety in physical composition.

The second method of presorting takes place after documents are printed, folded, and inserted into envelopes. Operators feed the mail from multiple daily jobs into a machine equipped with a high-speed multi-line optical character reader (MLOCR). The sorting machine looks up the address on each mailpiece, sprays the postal barcode on the envelope, and sorts mail into bins or pockets. As the bins fill, machine operators unload the envelopes into mail trays, mark them, and stack them on pallets for transportation to a USPS facility.

The bottomline: there should be improvement in paper supply in the months ahead. How much you will pay is anyone’s guess. Some coated paper producers announced price increases May 1.

“Paper mills and merchants are projecting allocations and continued limited supplies well into 2022,” states Ken McDonald, Vice President Supply Chain, IWCO Direct in an online post.

“However, as paper mills work to replenish inventories and demand levels off, most experts anticipate some relief after the second quarter, with pulp and wood prices likely to moderate,” he writes.