Royal Mail has rolled out its first fully-automated parcel sorting machine (PSM) in Wales.
The new machinery has been installed at the postal service’s Cardiff Mail Centre.
The installation is part of Royal Mail’s multi-million pound investment programme to replace significant manual sorting processes to help the company meet the surge in demand for parcels and online shopping.
Its advanced screening technology means parcels can be sorted up to four times more quickly than by hand.
Royal Mail said they can now process up to 7,500 parcels per hour (and 157,000 parcels per day) to local delivery offices across Wales and the rest of the UK.
The machine was built by automated technology company, Solystic, and handles parcels weighing up to 20kg on a conveyor belt system with scanning technology that automatically sorts parcels for despatch within Royal Mail’s network.
When asked about the job implications for postal workers, Royal Mail insisted that the new parcel sorting machine would not impact jobs at the mail centre.
The Communication Workers Union, which represents 110,000 members in the Royal Mail, said it largely supports parcel automation.
Assistant Secretary at CWU Davie Robertson, said: "Clearly machines sort faster than people, so there is potential for workload impact. However, the strategy of being able to automate parcels will allow Royal Mail to grow capacity and traffic volume and, in the long term, its market share. This creates more jobs as Royal Mail migrates from being a letters-based operation to focus more on parcels and parcel volumes."
Mr Robertson added: "It is important that to some degree Royal Mail is able to increase the capacity of its current state and one way to do that is to introduce levels of automation. Generally, we are careful and make sure that each deployment is in the interest of our members, certainly in the current programme of PSM deployments. We do believe that is in the long term best interest for CWU members."
Parcels automation programme director Sarah Coulson said: “We are transforming the way Royal Mail processes parcels given the rapid growth in online shopping in recent years.”
She added: “Our investment in state-of the-art parcel sorting machines will help us better meet the growing demands of our customers in Wales and the rest of the UK and is a vital part of the ongoing reinvention of Royal Mail.”
Maurizio Puppo, director of strategy and business development at Solystic, said: “Our parcel sorting machines will help Royal Mail quickly and effectively sort the increasing number of parcels that are being posted across its network thanks to the growth in e-commerce.”
A total of 39 Royal Mail parcel sorting machines are set to be in operation by October 2022, nearly 100% increase in a year.
This includes installations at new hubs being built in Warrington and Daventry, which when operational, will be able to process more than 1.5million parcels per day.
