Did you know ..... Great Britain was the first country to issue postage stamps, on 1 May 1840. That is why UK stamps are the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin.
FACTS & FIGURES
In the UK, 80 million letters are handled each day
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
Of the 87%, about 60% goes from businesses to consumers (B2C); and about 27% from businesses to businesses (B2B)
Shares of mail market by type
The overall volume of direct mail has increased by 87% in the last 10 years, whilst expenditure has increased by 118%
£2,371.32 million was spent on direct mail in 2005 - 12.5% of all advertising expenditure
Almost 40% of direct mail expenditure is spent on postage
Mail production and postage
New operators carried nearly 35 million items 'end-to-end' providing collection, sorting and delivery, in 2006-07
Royal Mail made 1.2 billion ‘final mile’ downstream access deliveries in 2005-06, compared to 87 million the year before
In the 7 months to October 2006, downstream access volumes continued to grow and latest figures show that downstream access now accounts for 10.8% of Royal Mail’s total letters volume
The threat of competition promoted a welcome improvement in Royal Mail’s quality of service. In 2003/04 Royal Mail missed all 16 of it’s quality of service targets. As part of its latest price control it now has 12 targets and this year is expected to meet or exceed 11 of them