Parcelforce Worldwide, Royal Mail’s express parcels unit, has opened a new depot in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, north of London, to handle regional flows for south-east England.
The new South East Processing Centre (SEPC), opened this week by local MP Grant Shapps, will create over sixty new jobs and help to reduce Parcelforce Worldwide’s carbon footprint for parcels that can be processed locally within the south-east rather than having to be transported to a central processing facility.
The 60,000 sq. ft. facility contains a new custom-built automated handling system capable of processing over 50,000 parcels a night. It utilises some of the latest innovative parcel handling and processing technology. Parcelforce Worldwide has worked with Caljan and Royal Mail Engineering to design and install a new automated handling system, based on tried and tested depot models.
A Parcelforce Worldwide spokesperson said: “The new South East Processing Centre is central to Parcelforce Worldwide’s continued investment in innovation, technology and the growth of our business. We are pushing the boundaries of automation with the technology we have installed, supporting the growing demands and the increasing requirements of our customers. It will enable us to handle even more parcels, allowing us to drive up our customer experience and continue to maintain our consistently high end-to-end quality nationwide, all the year round including Christmas.”
