SAPO investment will slash mail processing times
South African Post Office (SAPO) has promised to halve the time it takes to process mail after investing R52m ($7.5m) in new machinery. The operator has installed four new Canceller-Facer-Culling (CFC) machines at its Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria mail centres.
The systems incorporate the “most modern technology available anywhere in the world”, which will result in improved mail process efficiency, SAPO said.
Manufactured by Toshiba in Japan, the machines will replace five existing machines, each more than 20 years old.
Motshoanetsi Lefoka, the group chief executive of SAPO, said: “The Post Office is always looking to optimise mail operations, reduce costs and grow volume, and ultimately improve customer satisfaction. These new machines will give us advanced sorting capabilities that can profoundly affect our operations.”
Delivering on its vision of being recognised among the leading providers of postal and related services in the world, the project with Toshiba is a part of the SAPO’ strategy to sustain affordability of postal services while continuing to build on gains in service improvement, cost reduction, upgrading, modernisation of mechanisation and automation systems.
According to Pierre Rossouw, automation engineering, mail business, SAPO, it is now possible to identify RTS (return-to-sender) mail, which will bring the circulation of RTS items between offices and processing centres under control.
Another new capability is the ability to recognise the revenue value of stamps and other indicia to determine correctly-, over- and under paid items. These new CFC machines are also able to recognise BRS, franked and prepaid mail.
