Investing in parcels

Chief customer officer Nick Landon hosted a Town Hall session at Luton Delivery Office. You can find out more about how colleagues felt the session went by playing the video above.

The session focused on how we’re doing as a business, Brexit, the Royal Mail share price and where we’ll invest in the future.

Nick highlighted how letters are declining by between 4-6% every year and how the fact that GDPR means everyone has to give active permission to receive advertising mail, has seen our letter decline increase. ‘If GDPR doesn’t ease off, we’ll see a faster decline, which could impact on our profit,’ he said. ‘We don’t think this is going to happen. It depends on how confident people are with Brexit. No-one knows what is going to happen with Brexit and what this will do to the UK economy. It’s going to be a difficult journey.’

Nick said that in 10 years’ time, three-quarters of our work is going to involve parcels. ‘With parcel sortation machines going in, the layout of our buildings is going to need to change,’ he said. ‘Pushing a cage with 10 parcels in it is not efficient. We’re investing heavily in how we automate parcels and change the way we process them.

‘We also need larger vehicles as the next generation of vehicles will be bigger. We’re likely to see legislation, so we’ll see more electric vehicles. Over time, we’ll need more vans, bigger vans, as well as electric vans. We’re testing the next generation of those across the country right now.’

Nick answered a number of questions around parcels separation, Door-to Door deliveries, new ways of working, and the shorter working week. He stressed how the business is committed to everything it put into the agreement with the CWU. ‘That’s a live discussion,’ he said. ‘it’s not being switched off.’