Green light for new mail centre machines

Postal June 22 2018

Parcel sort machines (PSMs) will be up and running at 13 mail centres around the country, following the completion of successful trials at four sites, reports CWU industrial assistant secretary Davie Robertson. The project will ultimately deploy 16 machines and the location of the remaining three PSMs has yet to be determined.

“Within the Four Pillars of Security agreement, we see the mail centre network as a key integral element of a successful operational pipeline and it’s crucial that the network can prosper, attract new business, new volume, and additional traffic – in order to maintain and secure jobs for our members going forward,” says Davie.

Trials of the machine began in 2016 at Swindon Mail Centre and were then extended to Home Counties North (HCN), Chelmsford and Greenford Mail Centres.

The union has supported the trial activity and sees the PSM deployment as a positive indicator of the way forward for the company and CWU members with regards to parcel sortation and growth opportunities.

Two york tippers lift and empty input york containers onto a conveyor that takes the parcels up to the operators at the top, who place the machinable parcels onto the system.

The parcels travel through a reader which uses optical character recognition (OCR) and reads bar codes to select the correct destination – the parcels move onto a circular sorter, and when each item reaches its correct output, a drop-tray sorter drops it into its designated output york.

Through the course of the trial, and with the full input of the CWU, the PSMs are now reaching a business case sort rate of 10,000 parcels per hour, with a maximum per-item weight of 3kg and maximum dimensions of 450mm x 350mm x 200mm.

While the PSM is designed to run at full capacity with an agreed staffing level of 11 per machine, contingency arrangements have also been agreed which would allow for lower staffing levels in certain circumstances, such as sampling or low-volume runs.

Volunteers will be sought for these positions, and full training – including the appropriate health and safety aspects – will be provided.

Explaining the importance of this development, Davie said: “Clearly parcel growth is a commercial priority for the business and it’s crucial that our mail centres are equipped to deal with increasing volumes of parcel traffic.

“The deployment of the PSMs is a key initiative in ensuring that Royal Mail can compete for and win volume in the competitive parcels market.

“Successful deployment of this machine has the potential to put Royal Mail at the forefront of the industry and ahead of the competition – which is of crucial importance for the best interests of our members going forward,” Davie added.

• The mail centres where PSMs will be installed are: Birmingham, Bristol, Chelmsford, Gatwick, Greenford, Home Counties North, Jubilee, Leeds, Manchester, Preston, South Midlands, Swindon, Warrington

• Deployment commencement dates for the above sites will be announced soon