Online shopping sparks surge in festive parcels

With more than 180,000 parcels passing through their hands in just one night, Royal Mail staff know they are living in unprecedented times.

In the past the average figure at Christmas has been less than half this, but while the number of letters posted fell 14 per cent over the past year, the number of parcels and packets soared.

Click on the image on the right to see more pictures.

The reason – the rise of online shopping through sites such as Amazon.

While the traditional high street retailer is suffering like never before, the arrival of a 700,000 sq ft Amazon processing centre in Rugeley in October has given new hope to the 850 people working at the Royal Mail North West Midlands Mail Centre in Sun Street, Wolverhampton.

The centre handles all the mail for the WV, ST, WS and DY postcode areas – pretty much the whole of the Black Country and Staffordshire.

It has taken on 404 temporary staff for Christmas – more than ever before – and some of those will stay on longer than normal into January to handle the parcels bought online in the January sales.

It is a difficult time for Royal Mail. Around 550 jobs are being axed across the Midlands, although not in Wolverhampton.

The company made a £120 million loss on letters last year and is still losing £2m a week.

The Government is preparing it for privatisation and more letters are being delivered later in the day as a result of the downturn in post.

So the decision by Amazon to stick with the Royal Mail as its delivery partner is of massive importance, with plant manager Tim Jones saying it cannot be underestimated.

The 44-year-old, who took on the job 10 weeks ago, says: "Until recently in a typical night shift we were sorting 80,000 to 90,000 packets. Last week we did 180,000 in one night.

"Compared to last year we're up about 12 per cent and a lot of that is internet shopping."

Royal Mail keeps in close contact with Amazon, which itself took on 1,700 temporary staff, to prepare itself for what is being ordered and where it is going.

Over the festive period the centre is expected to handle 66m items of Christmas mail and has taken on an extra 79 vehicles to get all the letters, cards and parcels out.

Father-of-two Mr Jones says: "The Amazon contract has been really exciting for us and it's starting to ramp up now with what's coming into the centre. The items can go anywhere in the UK and if we can make that a success by delivering a fantastic quality of service, then it will be great news for us in the future.

"I tell people that this contract is directly equal to jobs and everyone understands that."

Yet mail workers are not alone in their task and the well-maintained machinery at their disposal is even more vital at Christmas. While Father Christmas has his elves, bosses at Royal Mail have their "imps", meaning "integrated mail processors".

There are six of them that can automatically sort the vast majority of the mail.

They read the addresses and postcodes and sort the mail into the right postal district. Randomly, those letters and cards then go on a Tardis.

Named after the famous spacecraft in Doctor Who, they are simply big cabinets of shelves where the mail is stored.

"It'd be nice to have the real thing though", Mr Jones says.

Despite the difficulties faced by falling numbers of letters, Royal Mail recently invested around £1m in the Wolverhampton centre to provide eight new compact sequence sorters.

The machines put letters into the right sequence for postmen and women to deliver. Out on the streets the people delivering the letters and parcels have had to be equipped with new trolleys to cope with the extra weight of carrying so many parcels and packets instead of letters.

Wolverhampton's three MPs Pat McFadden, Emma Reynolds and Paul Uppal visited staff on Friday.

The three were full of praise for the workers. Mr McFadden, a former postal services minister, said: "There's been a big change because of internet shopping but it's obvious that people really value the Royal Mail, and that's especially evident at Christmas."

* The last posting dates are December 20 for first class items and December 17 for second class. Special delivery items can go up to December 22.