Investments

Swiss Post is investing in efficiency, quality and capacity

To ensure that physical consignments continue to reliably reach their recipients in the future, Swiss Post is investing in advanced technologies. It is purchasing new scanners, expanding automatic sequencing and increasing the capacity of its parcel centers.

A Swiss Post worker delivers a parcel or registered letter and the recipient acknowledges receipt on the scanner. But these scanners are outdated. Since spring 2015, Swiss Post has been equipping its delivery staff with new devices and modern software. The new scanners work with apps. One app, for example, shows all addresses within a radius of one kilometre, helping delivery staff to find addresses. Another can be used to find the important items pending for the day.

Today, machine-sortable letters are sorted automatically for each delivery round in the order of letter boxes, in a process known as sequencing. In 2014, Swiss Post brought additional letter sorting equipment on stream, extending its automatic sequencing capacities for standard sized consignments and P.O. Box deliveries. Currently, around 75 percent of machine-processable letters are sorted by sequencing, equivalent to about one billion letters a year.

Today, almost every second parcel is sent as PostPac PRIORITY and has to be processed overnight. To handle the growing parcel volumes reliably, even at peak times, Swiss Post is upgrading its three parcel centers with state-of-the-art sorting systems. In 2014, the first additional system in Härkingen was brought on stream. The parcel center can now handle around 25 percent more items than before.