Tag: Business Post

Business Post, the parcels and postal delivery group, is to launch a letters service in the summer that will guarantee next-day delivery anywhere in the UK.

Customers will send letters over the internet to UK Mail, a Business Post subsidiary, which will print them in color at depots close to the destinations. The company will then put the letters in envelopes and hand them over to Royal Mail for delivery over “the final mile”.

The iMail service could reduce the carbon footprint of a letter by up to 80 per cent, Business Post said. It will also appeal to big corporate users that are keen to reduce emissions produced by their businesses.

“It will also allow us to offer our service to consumers and small businesses whose mailing requirements are too small for our existing services”, said Guy Buswell, chief executive.

UK Mail has doubled its share of the British postal market for the second year running. It collects and sorts about 11 per cent of mail before passing it on to Royal Mail for delivery to homes and businesses around the country.

Tucked away in one of Guy Buswell’s depots are 12 pillar boxes. Standard Royal Mail design but painted blue. For Buswell is a private postman and the pillar boxes may one day be part of his expansion plans. For the moment, however, they confirm the conclusion of last week’s report from former Ofcom regulator Richard Hooper that the private consumer has seen no benefit from introducing competition to postal services.

Buswell is chief executive of Business Post, which collects letters from the likes of Vodafone and HSBC, sorts them and hands them to the Royal Mail for delivery. His UK Mail subsidiary handles more than 10 per cent of Britain’s post but, as yet, the public cannot give him letters for posting.

On the wall of his office, on an industrial estate outside Birmingham, above one of his 57 depots, is the very first envelope he delivered. It was from Powergen, posted on May 10 2004, and commemorates the end of the 370-year postal monopoly.

UK Mail now delivers more than 2bn letters a year. “Last week we carried 12m items in one day,” boasts Buswell, 46. It is arguably Britain’s biggest private mail service (the argument would come from TNT, the Dutch post office) and this week he will announce plans to change the quoted Business Post name to UK Mail Group.

Just 50 big customers account for 40 per cent of Britain’s post and Buswell has signed up a fair share, including Abbey, Prudential, Carphone Warehouse, Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland. Yet sending letters is a shrinking business.

He blames Royal Mail, whose universal service last week posted its first loss in the year to March – a GBP 100m shortfall.

“We can collect mail from any customer that has 200 items per night. In the future there will be pillar boxes – or collection points,” he says. For now, however, he is working on I-mail, which will allow anyone to e-mail a letter to UK Mail for hand delivery next day.

Why not e-mail it directly to the recipient? Buswell points out that legal addresses are not electronic addresses. I-mail will be launched this summer and the consummate salesman explains: “It massively reduces the carbon footprint and reduces time. It will cost between 40p and 50p and be a next-day service.”

But its importance, he states, “is that it will be innovation in the mail industry by a competitor.”