BR fights back on freight
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• In a move aimed at halting the loss of newspaper distribution business to road operators like TNT Newsfast and• Newsflow, British Rail is reorganising its newspaper distribution business to offer its publishing customers "significant savings".
Newspapers including the Daily Telegraph and the Financiol Times have been offered contracts with a saving of around 7.5% on their existing rail-based distribution contracts.
British Rail says it can offer the savings by amalgamating trains, although this may mean newspapers have to print up to 30 minutes earlier. The traditional services of packing and sorting the newspapers on trains will continue, says BR.
One of the new options being offered by BR is collection of the newspapers direct from printing plants by van operators on a subcontract basis, rather like the present door-to-door delivery service offered by Red Star.
BR hopes it can reach agreement with publishers over new distribution contracts before October, when the new timetable comes into effect — but the offer comes too late to tempt Mirror Group Newspapers, which recently switched its distribution business to NFC's Newsflow.
LI According to the latest annual figures to the end of March 1987, BR's Railfreight operation made a profit of £24.7 million after four years of losses, helped by a major reorganisation and the closure of its lossmaking Harwich to Zeebrugge train ferry.
Freightliner, however, continues to suffer: up to the end of March it recorded a £6.4 million loss.