Following a Postcomm industry consultation, Royal Mail has recently announced that it is planning to launch new pre-sorted products in August 2010.

The new products are designed for both Retail and Wholesale customers and will be launched as Mailsort and Access 70.

The consultation closed on April 23rd and Postcomm is set to announce its decision in the middle of May. Dependent upon the outcome of the consultation, these products will provide significantly fewer selections to be sorted than the current Mailsort products.

The proposed launch criteria suggest it will have around 85 selections (compared to the existing 120 and 700 products) and it will also require that mail will be presented in trays rather than bags.

We welcome a move towards mail presentation in trays as it would be generally beneficial to everyone concerned in the mail supply chain.

Royal Mail states that it can handle trays more efficiently than bags and that the lower number of selections will result in improved operational efficiencies as well as greater cost savings for customers.

By way of reminder, Royal Mail’s pre-sorted retail services are suitable for customers who send large volumes of mail. By carrying out some of the mail processing work themselves (pre-sortation) they can qualify for certain discounts.