Postal Carriers and Discounts

Royal Mail has been the dominant player providing postal services since 1840 when the uniform Penny Post was introduced.  In recent years its monopoly has been diluted with competition in the form of other providers offering specialist services. Royal Mail is a state owned limited company but there are plans to privatise part of the company in the future. The competitors are known as Down Stream Access (DSA) providers and they collect mail and sort mail to a degree in their depots, normally located in the centre of the country. The DSA providers then deliver their mail into the Royal Mail, Mail Centres across the UK for Royal Mail to deliver ‘the final mile’.

NRG has accounts with TNT and City Link, 2 of the DSA providers. We have also used other providers such as DHL and UK Mail for some of our clients. We provide advice on which is the best method to send your mail. We have collections every day from Royal Mail and City Link and order specific collections from other providers as required.

We look at each mailing and the client’s requirements to determine the cheapest method of postage. We are accredited by the Royal Mail to supply all their discounted services. We can obtain the mailsort discount and advise on how to achieve even better discounts which might be by printing a barcode or by using a special font for the address. Furthermore, now that we are accredited with the environmental standard, ISO 14001, we can achieve even greater discounts using the Royal Mail’s Sustainable Mail service. The criteria needed to achieve these discounts are more stringent than the basic mailsort criteria but not impossible to achieve!

We help you to plan your mailings in all aspects and the postage can be a significant part of the cost. We make it our business to know the cheapest method of postage for your campaign. We might advise that you design your brochure as A5 size to benefit from some significant savings, unless that would ruin your A4 marketing image!

NRG is accredited by Royal Mail to print and dispatch all Cleanmail OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and CBC (Customer Bar Code) Walksort, Mailsort, Presstream and Standard Tariff mailings.

Sample Savings (approximate)

    Letter (DL and C5 @ 75g)     Large Letter (C4 @ 75g)
           
Quantity   4000     1000
Standard Tariff   £1440 (36p per item)     £580 (58p per item)
NRG Rate
(Royal Mail)		   £856.00 (21.4p per item)     £271 (27.1p per item)
Saving   £584.00 (14.6p per item)     £309 (30.9p per item)

We also dispatch mail overseas and use either Royal Mail International or City Link depending on which is the best service for you.

VAT is applicable to all DSA Providers and certain Royal Mail services. If you are not registered for VAT, we can suggest a VAT exempt method using Royal Mail.

We understand the postal system and know how to get the most effective service for your needs. It is a difficult subject to understand and to keep abreast of the latest services and prices. We can achieve the best postage discounts to UK and foreign addresses so why not ask us for advice. No mailing is too small and 100,000 is about our maximum.

Please call 01743 454888 for full details of our services and how we can help you to increase your profit by saving on your postage.