Increasing parcels automation

The Parcel Sortation Machine (PSM) is a major part of Royal Mail’s commitment to competing in the parcels market. Over the last eight years, we’ve successfully deployed 36 PSMs in 28 plants around the UK.

Our PSMs have vastly increased efficiency in sorting parcels and we currently sort more than 80% of our parcels automatically.

We have now approved the investment for a further three PSMs into three mail centres and have signed contracts with Solystic, the manufacturer. Pictured is a Solystic PSM in Edinburgh Mail Centre.

PSM roll-out

New PSMs will be deployed in our Leeds, Plymouth and Exeter plants and will give us the capability to automate an additional 21,000 parcels per hour in total.

For Leeds, this will be their second PSM to be installed, reflecting they are one of the biggest mail centres in the country with one of the largest processed parcel volumes. They will be first to go live at the beginning of August.

For Plymouth and Exeter, it will be their first PSM and will provide parcel automation capability to the South West. Plymouth is expected to go live in September, closely followed by Exeter in October. 

News of the PSMs has been well received by all plant teams and local CWU representatives. Planning for the new machines will start imminently. This includes assessing how plants will process mail during the build, what parcels will be processed on each shift and when training will be completed.

Through our continued investment in parcels automation, we will be able to compete more effectively for business and meet the demands of our customers.  

The increase in parcels automation also helps us protect our revenue. Every parcel that passes through the automation sends data to our revenue protection capability, which checks each item against what the customer has declared. This includes volume, size, weight and format – enabling us to amend customer postings to recover postage due.

Look out for more from the three sites as the builds progress.