About the mail market

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http://www.psc.gov.uk/about-the-mail-market.html

Here are some key facts about the UK mail market. For more detail on some of the issues covered, see also our series of downloadable factsheets, as well as our web pages listing UK market reviews, and outlining the development of competition in the mail market.

Key facts

Businesses send about 87% of all mail in the UK licensed postal market, with the largest 500 companies accounting for 50% of all mail volumes. About 60% of mail goes from business to consumers (B2C), and 27% goes from businesses to businesses (B2B) (source: Royal Mail).

Consumers post the other 13% of mail in the licensed area - about 10% goes to other households and 3% to businesses.

The total letters market (in the licensed area) has, after a period of continued growth, dropped slightly - by 1.6 per cent in 2005-06 - and accounts for 20.3 billion items (source: Postcomm).

Eighteen licensed operators can now provide mail services: ANC Limited, Challenger Security Services (Admin), Citipost AMP Limited, City Link Post (trading name of Target Express Parcels), DHL Global Mail (UK) Limited, DX Network Services, Intercity Communications, The Mailing House Group, Racer Consultancy Management Services Ltd, Red Star Parcels (trading as Lynx Mail), Royal Mail, Royale Research Limited, Securicor, Secure Mail Services, Secured Mail Limited, TNT Post UK Limited (formerly TNT Mail UK Limited), UK Mail and Zip Mail Ltd.

Several companies have signed "access" agreements with Royal Mail, allowing mail they have collected and sorted to be fed into Royal Mail's network for final delivery. Royal Mail made 2.4 billion access deliveries in 2006-07, compared to 1.2 billion the year before. In 2006-07, access mail was 12% of Royal Mail's total operational volume, with customer direct access making up just under half of this amount (source: Postcomm, with data from Royal Mail).

New operators carried nearly 35 million items 'end-to-end' providing collection, sorting and delivery, in 2006-07 (source: Postcomm). This is a small decrease from 2005-06. However, we are aware that some operators are trialling end-to-end solutions in limited geographical areas.

But Royal Mail still dominates postal services delivering 99% of volume in the addressed letters market (items weighing less than 350g and costing less than £1 to post) in 2005-06 (source: Royal Mail).