PostNL opts for ID Mail system to sort irregular mail
Dutch postal operator PostNL has chosen US firm ID Mail Systems to provide a new mail coding and sorting system – and has an option to purchase 24 more. Connecticut-based ID Mail signed a deal last week to provide a special version of its flagship product, the Dispatcher MX.
The contract came after PostNL tested out systems from four different suppliers.
The new machine will process irregularly-sized letters and flats, as well as flats more than 10mm thick, sorting them into walk sequence order. It will handle mail that cannot be sorted by PostNL’s new high-speed combination letter/flat mail sorting systems.
The deal with ID Mail represents an important milestone for its Dispatcher MX System, which has previously been supplied to Post Danmark.
“Robust and highly specialised”
ID Mail Systems president Jerry Fenerty said the deal with PostNL will see the first system provided by April 1, 2013, with an option to provide 24 more systems over the next several years.
“The agreement with PostNL, the largest in ID Mail’s history, demonstrates ID Mail’s ability to provide robust and highly specialised mail and packet processing solutions on a national level,” said Fenerty.
PostNL will use the Dispatcher MX System to apply a proprietary sorting code to each mail piece to allow sorting of items into mail carriers’ walk sequences, and merging with mail from PostNL’s Solystic extended mail sorter (XMS) machines.
ID Mail said its system includes a six-person station for manual induction of mail and an optional automated feeding module. The machine uses an optical character recognition system with colour-imaging camera and video encoding, with 72 sorting bins and options for additional sorting outputs.
The company said the 60 metre long system can process up to 10,000 mail items each hour, ranging from extremely lightweight letters to heavy and bulky 40mm flats and packets.
PostNL sorted 82% of its national mail automatically in 2011, and is currently attempting to build its sorting capacity to cut costs as mail volumes decline.
