Heading on-line to do some last-minute Christmas buying will not be with out threat. But that’s simply what thousands and thousands of Brits are doing this week – and they are going to be hoping their presents arrive in time for the large day.
Some of the accountability for that may fall to Royal Mail – with the postal service below enormous strain to carry out higher than it did final Christmas when strikes induced chaos.
At the guts of Royal Mail’s operations are its two parcel tremendous hubs, enormous warehouses within the Midlands and the North West that may between them course of 2m parcels a day over the festive interval.
I visited the 53-acre hub in Daventry that opened in June for a behind-the-scenes look on its busiest day of the yr, December 11.
The very first thing I discover is the dimensions. The hub is as large as 30 soccer pitches and you could possibly match 14 jumbo jets within the warehouse.
Cavernous: Royal Mail’s tremendous hub in Daventry, Northamptonshire, is as large as 30 soccer pitches and will match 14 jumbo jets
It employs 700 everlasting staff however bosses doubled staffing numbers to 1,400 for the festive season.
The ambiance inside is calmer than I anticipated at such a busy time of yr.
Tensions run larger because the day goes on and strict deadlines strategy, such because the postal practice that departs each night.
Lorries arrive loaded up with parcels that are unloaded on enormous trolleys.
I see shipments from Footasylum and Dr Martens arrive – sneakers should be a preferred present this yr.
The trolleys are fed to very large robots, which tip the parcels into the sorting machine.
Rumbling above my head is an enormous conveyor belt carrying a gradual stream of brown containers larger and better into the constructing.
They are then mechanically sorted by vacation spot. The sorter takes 0.2 seconds to scan a barcode and does three at a time.
The tools may even decipher written addresses inside six seconds. It runs for 21 hours a day, with three hours scheduled for important upkeep. Everything in regards to the tremendous hub is designed to hurry up the supply of parcels.
Royal Mail selected the Northamptonshire location for its transport hyperlinks and proximity to on-line retailers. Major purchasers equivalent to Boohoo are on the identical industrial park, that means the parcel will get to Royal Mail in report time when a buyer makes an order.
Royal Mail’s chief buyer officer Nick Landon
And making deliveries quicker is central to Royal Mail’s marketing strategy as shoppers have turn into extra demanding.
We count on to faucet a button and obtain our items inside hours.
Royal Mail has additionally confronted elevated competitors from rivals equivalent to supply companies Evri and Yodel, and, after all, Amazon.
‘This is one of my best sales tools,’ Royal Mail’s chief buyer officer Nick Landon, says of the hub.
But the shift has led to criticism that it’s prioritising parcels whereas vital letters equivalent to NHS appointments are left languishing in sorting workplaces.
The postal service denies there’s any central coverage that locations extra significance on parcel deliveries.
The firm is responding to the rise in parcels by investing in these hubs – and it’s hoping to open no less than two extra over the following few years.
Royal Mail has a crew of information scientists who attempt to predict what we’re going to purchase at completely different occasions of yr.
A decade in the past, the preferred time for on-line buying was throughout lunch breaks, however that has shifted to between 9pm and 10pm.
The largest sector is clothes, and the most important group of buyers are girls of their late teenagers and early 20s.
‘They tend to order on the basis of what they’ve watched on TV that night time or what they’ve gone out and seen their mates carrying, and that may immediate some late-night ordering for supply the following day,’ says Landon.
Royal Mail seemed to rivals like Amazon for inspiration when designing the superhubs, in addition to much less probably locations.
Much of the tools is made by the identical corporations that provide airports with logistics.
The necessities for sending publish and baggage are a lot the identical: parcels and suitcases each have to finish up on the right vacation spot.
Upstairs within the management room, staff watch a wall of screens displaying brightly colored diagrams that look a bit like a London Underground map.
Each illustration is a layer of the huge conveyor belt system I noticed downstairs and can flag up points equivalent to a caught parcel, to allow them to be mounted as shortly as attainable.
The machines course of so many parcels a minute {that a} quick delay can have enormous penalties for deliveries.
And the very last thing Royal Mail wants is one other Christmas of disappointments.