Tyneside Mail Centre working around the clock for us - VIDEO

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Tyneside Mail Centre working around the clock for us - VIDEO
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IT’S always a relief to drop your Christmas cards in the post box – but the job of delivering them is far from done.

Christmas cards and parcels are being posted all over the North East as we near December 25 – and they all converge on one place.

Tyneside Mail Centre on Earlsway, Gateshead handles post from across the region and is facing its busiest period with Christmas mail on top of the usual deliveries.


With sorting machines sifting and franking machines stamping, the organised chaos of the giant hall is slowly building and the operation works 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

To cope with demand, there are 300 extra packet deliveries every morning, and there are 400 extra staff as well as the usual 700 employed across the course of the year. The centre takes letters, cards and parcels from as far south as Peterlee, having just begun to receive Teesside mail, up to Berwick in Northumberland, and west to Haltwhistle.

Mail centre manager Paul Laidler said: “We’ve seen an explosion in internet shopping and that’s hit us full on, especially last week and into next week.


“The cards will never decline but the packets have been the explosion.”

Stressed out adults rushing to get ready for Christmas have left post workers scratching their heads after forgetting to put names and addresses on Christmas cards.

Simply addressed ‘Deb and Maurice’ or ‘Ian and Amber’, workers think they might have been posted by accident instead of dropping them directly through a neighbour’s letterbox.

Other items include wrapped presents with no name or address, or cards simply marked ‘Beechwood Avenue’ – but there are five in the North East.

One man even posted a bottle of wine, unwrapped, with stamps and address on the bottle!

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