GLOBAL courier giant DHL has signed an international leasing arrangement for its 10,000-strong fleet with Lease Plan.

The memorandum of understanding covers Europe and Africa, but will also see DHL introduce Lease Plan to its operations in other regions of the world, and the two companies have already started to work together in Australia and New Zealand.

DHL will adopt Lease Plan's actual cost motoring product 'Open Calculation' and use Lease Plan On-Line, the e-commerce system that enables Lease Plan customers to conduct all their fleet administration via the internet.

A 'FleetMaster' steering group at DHL's Brussels headquarters supervised the selection of a single supplier following a two-year project to rationalise the courier firm's leasing and fleet management suppliers from 25 to one within its 20 major European markets.

Nigel Ward, FleetMaster project manager, said: 'The primary driver for DHL pursuing the path of consolidation was to minimise the resources tied into fleet management, with this not being our primary business.

'Furthermore, entering the market with our combined vehicle volumes was sure to bring increased benefits.'

He added that DHL was now in negotiations with vehicle manufacturers and fuel companies to establish similar single supply arrangements.

In selecting Lease Plan, Paul Bellamy, facilities manager at DHL UK, said the company had wanted to appoint a fleet leasing company that already had a strong global presence and global systems in place - and was not just promising to introduce them.

'Lease Plan was able to demonstrate a strong competitive market position and its Open Calculation product was very important in the final decision-making process, being a key differentiator to the products being offered by the other suppliers,' he said.

DHL will now hold its first fleet conference for its European fleet operations in May.

Nick Salkeld, Lease Plan's commercial director, said: 'This arrangement underlines the significant increase in the number of international companies who are looking to one global supplier to meet all their vehicle leasing needs.' (April 2000)