Royal Mail seeks warehousing upgrade

The Royal Mail is planning an £8m upgrade to its warehousing facilities in London, to improve the receipt, storing and picking processes in its mail sorting operations.

It is looking for a number of suppliers to provide flexible warehouse fulfilment services, which involve the sorting and monitoring of parcels coming in to its London warehouses.

Such services are increasingly important to the Royal Mail, as it looks for supplementary revenue streams in the face of increased competition and tightening margins in its parcel delivery business.

In 2010, Royal Mail began offering integrated e-commerce, stock management and fulfilment services to businesses. It’s so-called Warehousing and E-commerce Engine is aimed at growing businesses that need partners to manage online sales fulfilment.

The warehousing contract is expected to be for an initial three-year period, with the potential to be extended for a further two years.

The group’s datacentres, networks, voice services and desktops are run by the Prism Alliance, an outsourcing consortium led by computer services giant CSC.

The Royal Mail recently confirmed that Catherine Doran, formerly chief information officer at Network Rail, would replace Yvonne Ferguson as its CIO. Ferguson had only been in post for a year.