NEW INNOVATION AT ROYAL MAIL’S PARCEL HUB

Royal Mail has unveiled the latest innovation at its state-of-the-art North West Parcel Hub, which reduces the average time it takes to unload an HGV trailer from three-and-a-half hours to just six minutes, an improvement of 97%.

The Automatic Trailer Unloader was fully designed and engineered in just nine months by Royal Mail’s in-house Engineering Team, which invents bespoke solutions to help improve efficiency across the business.

Previously, unloading loose-load trailers – which hold up to 8,000 parcels – could only be done manually. This new technology vastly speeds up the process by fitting trailers with conveyor belts, providing a seamless connection to the parcel sorting systems inside the Hub, which process around 800,000 parcels a day at speeds of 40,000 parcels per hour.

The first Automatic Trailer Unloader is now live at the North West Parcel Hub in Warrington and a second will be rolled out to the Midlands Parcel Hub in Daventry in the coming months. They will be available to some of Royal Mail’s large account customers, as part of the company’s strategy to roll out more automation to boost efficiency and meet growing demand for next-day deliveries.

Neil Chaplain, Royal Mail’s Engineering and Process Design Director, said: “Our new Automatic Trailer Unloader dramatically decreases the processing time for loose-load trailers by removing one of the few manual steps at our Parcel Hubs. There is no technology on the market that solves this issue in a way that fully satisfies our needs, so our team of engineers designed our own solution. It is a fantastic opportunity for our large account customers, enabling consumers to order even later in the day for next-day delivery.”