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Hi-tech imports/exports scuttled by the postal service?

I think that all readers will be aware of the dangers associated with lithium batteries.

We've seen numerous instances reported in the media where laptops, cellphones and other hi-tech devices have spontaneously erupted in flames, sometimes causing significant collateral damage and injury.

As a result of this "risk", postal services around the world are clamping down on the airmail shipment of lithium batteries to an increasing extent and now it's becoming very difficult to get such batteries delivered to your door from an offshore source.

And, thanks to changes in the postal system, that may mean that in the not-too-distant future, personal imports or exports of such batteries or devices containing them may be utterly impractical.

What's the postal service got to do with it?

Well there was a time when you had two options for sending things between countries via the postal service...

You could send it surface-mail or airmail.

Airmail would take anywhere from a few days to a week or two, surface mail would usually take many weeks or months -- but was a lot cheaper.

For reasons I can't imagine, the option of surface mail has disappeared from the options offered by the postal services of most countries.

If you want to send that heavy/bulky gift to Aunty Edna in the UK then you no longer have the option of paying just a few dollars for a service that would see that package loaded onto a ship and unloaded 6-weeks later onto British soil.

Now, you'll have to pay a king's ransom to have that package sent via air where weight and volume both mean "expensive".

This must surely represent a bit of a blow to companies who want to export physical product without recruiting the very expensive services of a freight-forwarder or courier company.

I also wonder what effect it's having on the environment. To the best of my knowledge, the carbon-footprint of moving heavy stuff by sea is a lot lower than the cost of moving it by air. So why do we no longer have the choice?

And of course, once you start trying to import those lithium batteries that are becoming an increasingly important and common part of modern technology -- even airmail is now out of the question.

So just how do you get your little consignment of lithium batteries from country A to country B?

Well your options are severely limited.

You can use a courier service or you have to engage a freight-forwarder to ship via sea - both of which are inordinately expensive and the latter being completely uneconomic for anything other than large consignments.

So it would seem that there's yet another road-block in the path of any Kiwi hi-tech enterprise that wants to start small and export their products to an international market -- especially if there are lithium batteries involved.

Can't ship by airmail, can't ship by surface-mail.

Perhaps yet *another* reason why we ought to be getting really serious about building a KBE which focuses on licensing "ideas" to the world rather than shipping heavy/bulky product?

Would you like to see the old surface-mail service reinstated for heavy/bulky items or other "dangerous goods" such as lithium batteries which can't be sent via airmail?

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