Delivering dreams

On Tuesday - our busiest day of the year – we shipped 4.2 million letters and parcels in 24 hours from our Heathrow worldwide distribution centre (HWDC) in Slough, Berkshire.

E-commerce has led to a boom in Britain sending international mail - with this year having been the busiest in HWDC’s 15-year history.

The hub - one of 38 in the UK - uses seven miles of conveyer belts and measures up at an extraordinary 548,959 sq ft (51,000 sq metres), the same size as half a dozen football pitches.

Plant manager, Dan Tovey, joined Royal Mail as a temporary worker 25 years ago. He called the centre 'the biggest Scalextric set in the game’.

'We plan for this day for 11 months,’ he said. ‘As soon as Christmas finishes it's on to planning the next year. The plant runs 24 hours, seven days a week to get things to our customers on time. We usually have 1,500 people working here, but we have 2,000 from mid-November to 7 January.

'The team have responded fantastically and we are confident we will deliver all mail on time for our customers. It's a great company to move up in, we deliver dreams.’

HWDC international operations, communications and engagement lead, Bob Lawrence, said: 'Our staff have a five-year history check, there is such an incredible amount of stuff coming through here.

'We use a voice coding system to sort out all the mail coming through - they pass through the sorting machine we call “The Beast”. Alongside two other machines, we're able to process 26,000 packages an hour - we hope to be able to sort 40,000 an hour next year.

'We've had all sorts coming through here, from knives to jars of crickets - both have fallen out and gone everywhere. One time somebody had frozen a rattle snake - it woke up during processing and started rattling - we had to call the RSPCA.

‘We've had quite a few hand grenades found too, it seems to be a regular item - they weren't live though.'

Using the voice coding system, packer Ronnie Leslie has set the record for 11,700 packages in a day - by himself.

'Some are able to do eight to nine thousand in a day,’ he said. ‘But I have the record. I love what I do, Christmas is always something I look forward to.'