Colleagues at South West Distribution Centre (SWDC) have celebrated the sites 20-year anniversary.
Out of the 195 colleagues and 13 managers presently working at SWDC, 10 members from the original team of June 1999, are still there.
These include John Dunn, Peter Hicks, Mike Bamber, Gareth Hodgkinson, Gerard Porch, David Colburn, Chris Sawicki, Chris Shewring, Jenny Wells and Shaun Coombs, all of whom celebrate 20 years’ of service working at SWDC this year.
SWDC plant manager, Tony Holmes, said: ‘SWDC is a pioneering site with regards to World Class Mail and continuous improvement for Logistics. SWDC was one of three plants that achieved the bronze standard for in 2015 and we also achieved the sliver standard in 2016.’
Tony says, that over the years there has been a huge change in the volume of parcels processed at the plant. ‘As a comparison, in 1999 there were 2,000 containers of Mailsort 2/Economy processed a night and no parcels.
‘This year, we’re processing approximately 3,500 containers of Mailsort 2/Economy a month! And on average, there are around 60,000 Tracked parcels and 120,000+ First and Second Class parcels a day.’
Sayyed Zaidi operations support manager, said: ‘11 years ago, SWDC had it’s first-ever multi-product sorting machine, which is capable of sorting mail bags, letter trays and Tracked and non-Tracked parcels.
‘It’s the only machine of its kind in the business and it’s still in great working condition. In total, we processed 273,750,00 parcels in the financial year of 2018/19 at SWDC. That’s quite an achievement.’