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UK Postage Savings

Mailsort and Presstream

Royal Mail offers discounts on their standard postage rates - but only if you do some of their work for them. You do not get a discount merely because you post a lot of items - you have to sort the addresses and hand the items over to them presented in the correct manner for you to get a discount. The sortation is derived from postcodes but is not the same as sorting the postcodes alphanumerically as it is based upon the exact postcode areas that each delivery office covers and this may bear no resemblance to major postcode boundaries.

To qualify for a discounted option there must be at least 1,000 items over 60gms item weight or over 4,000 items under 60gms item weight within the UK and with good postcodes. There is, however, a significant amount of work that must be done in order to present the mail in the correct way - aside from the computer sortation and therefore small, qualifying, mailings may still not benefit from a real discount after the extra handling costs are taken into account.

There are two levels of discount:

i) Weight Discount
Standard postal rates go up in stages, 2nd Class post for example is 21p up to 60gms and 35p up to 100gms. Mailsort derives a straight-line price from the exact weight of the item. You pay 21p for the first 60gms, but after that you pay per gramme according to the formula:
Mailsort 2 (2nd class) items between 61 and 100gms:
(Weight of item - 60) x 0.3 + 29p
and for items over 100gms to 250:
(Weight of item - 100) x 0.29 + 43p

Therefore the savings on an item weighing 62gms will be very significant as the standard postage would be 35p but the Mailsort price would be only 29.6p.

Presstream

Publishers of magazines may qualify for their own Presstream contract.

The mechanics of this are identical to Mailsort but, as a registered publisher, extra discount is obtained per gram. The first 60gms cost 21p 2nd class (and only 22p 1st class!) but the rate of increase is less than for Mailsort. Over 300gms the rate per gram also significantly decreases.
For example, a journal weighing 340gms would cost:
Mailsort 2: 109p
Presstream 2: 55.98p

ii) Sortation Discount (Additional to the Weight discount)
The addresses are sorted into small areas (delivery office areas) and, where there are not enough items in an area, into larger county-type areas. These are called Direct Selections and Residues respectively. You get more discount for Direct Selections as the Royal Mail have less onwards sortation to do.

For Mailsort 2 (Second Class), offering 2-3 day delivery, you deduct 13% from the item price (according to the item weight) for all Direct Selections and 8% for all Residue items for items weighing up to 100gm. For items weighing over 100gm, the discount is 15.5% for Directs and 10.5% for residues. For Presstream 2, the discounts are 13% and 8% up to 60g and 15.5% & 10.5% for items over 60g.

Mailsort 3, offers a 4-7 day delivery, with 24.6% discount on Direct Selections and 15% for Residue for items weighing up to 100gms. Finally, for items weighing over 100gms you can achieve 26.4% discount for Directs and 16.8% for Residues. Further discounts are available for mailings in categories in between 50,000 - 99,999 items and 100,000+ items

On the face of it, you would think that Mailsort 3 is always the cheaper option, however, due to the item price factor, where someone holds a Presstream rather than a Mailsort account, it may well be cheaper to despatch Presstream 2 rather than Mailsort 3 at the same time as getting a faster delivery service. As a general rule, if the mailing is lightweight, Mailsort 3 is cheaper, if the mailing is heavy, Presstream 2 is cheaper.
If a publisher has a Presstream contract, they may be able to mail Presstream 1 (First Class) at a similar price to Presstream 2.
The costs per item on a 62gm item are as follows:

To qualify for Presstream 1, the journal would always have to be mailed Presstream 1 - it shouldn't just be a one-off.

For further information in Royal Mail’s discounted services, visit their web-site.

For items over 60gms, it can be worth using all Mailsort services at the entry point (1,000 items) however it is worth doing the calculations first. It is usually worthwhile using Presstream with 1,000 items. A great deal does depend on the exact weight and the sortation/geographic distribution.

One important factor to take into account which may affect costing calculations is that all envelopes must show a Postage Paid Impression (PPI) if Mailsort of Presstream are to be used. Sometimes the extra cost of doing this added to the general costs, negate the savings achievable.

When is it worth mailing Mailsort/Presstream?
With items below 60gms in weight, taking into account the costs involved sorting the data and presenting the post in the correct manner to Royal Mail

Mailsort 1 approx. 11,000 items
Mailsort 2 approx. 9,000 items
Mailsort 3 5,000 items

Standard Delivery Times