‘Parcels focused’

In five years’ time, we want to be a growing, parcels-led business, where letters are still important.

We want to be earning £12 billion in revenue and we expect 70% of the money we earn to come from parcels, up from its current 63% today.

Our existing mail centres will continue to process the majority of our mail – letters and letterboxable parcels – while, increased automation will help us achieve more than 80% automated parcel sortation and help us process smaller parcels more quickly and accurately.

We will have three new parcel hubs, which will work in tandem with our mail centres, but focus on larger and next-day parcels. Improved barcoding will mean we get paid for everything we do and our mail centres will have improved layouts and better traffic flow.

We asked colleagues at Greenford Mail Centre for their views:

OPG Chandra Amratlal (pictured) from Greenford Mail Centre, said: ‘Our parcel sorting machine is brilliant. It's good for us as it's made things quicker, and customers get a better service and their parcels on time.

‘Building hubs for big parcels is a good idea as long as the market is dictating that need. The next five years look good, we just need to make sure we keep up with competitors.’

HGV driver, Chris Asatourian, said: ‘Anything that can be done to expand the network is good for the business and for customers.

‘We are a parcel-focused business now, so it’s a great idea to do anything we can to set us apart from our competitors.’