UK Mail has signed an agreement with Royal Mail enabling it to extend its mail service into the packets industry.
The company already collects up to 17 million mail items a day through the letters side of the business, and with its new Packet+ service will deal with fulfilment items weighing up to 5kg and use Royal Mail for the last stage of the delivery cycle.
Customers will now able to send items that exceed the previous 2kg maximum specification through the standard mailing system.
Packet+ offers a three-day definite, non-signature service allowing customers to send out fulfilment items to destinations across the UK.
UK Mail will collect the unsorted packages from customers’ locations before sorting them for onward dispatch to the Royal Mail for the final mile delivery.
Packet+ will be available from 1st April and will cover the Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Northern Ireland with full track and trace facilities up to the point of Royal Mail handover.
This service is targeted primarily at larger mail order and internet retailers many of whom have a requirement to ship in excess of 1,000 items per night.
The agreement follows UK Mail and Royal Mail’s co-authorship of the downstream access agreement for letters in 2004, which it said effectively ended 370 years of Royal Mail’s monopoly.
