About the mail market

Here are some key facts about the UK mail market. For more detail on some of the issues covered, see also our series of downloadable factsheets, as well as our web pages listing UK market reviews, and outlining the development of competition in the mail market. 

Key facts

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. About 60% of mail goes from business to consumers (B2C), and 27% goes from businesses to businesses (B2B) (source: Royal Mail).

Consumers post the other 13% 

of mail in the licensed area - about 10% goes to other households and 3% to businesses.  

The total letters market 

(in the licensed area) has, after a period of continued growth, dropped slightly - by two per cent in 2006-07 - and accounts for 21.9 billion items. The market is worth £6.6 billion. (Source: Postcomm, with data from Royal Mail. Based on Royal Mail operational volumes including access, regulated mail and non-regulated mail. Excludes Door-to-Door and International services. For financial year 2007-08, volumes will be measured on a revenue-derived basis.) 

Twenty one licensed operators

can now provide mail services: Challenger Security Services (Admin), Citipost AMP Limited, City Link Post (trading name of Target Express Parcels), CMS (trading name of Royale Research Limited), DHL Express Limited (formerly Securicor Omega Express), DHL Global Mail (UK) Limited, Document Outsourcing Limited, DX Network Services, FedEx UK Limited (formerly ANC Limited), Intercity Communications, LDS Cambridge Limited, Lynx Mail (trading name of Red Star Parcels), The Mailing House Group (trading as Northern Mail), Peoplepost Limited, Post 123, Racer Consultancy Management Services Ltd, Royal Mail,  Secure Mail Services (formerly Special Mail Services Limited), Secured Mail Limited, TNT Post UK Limited, UK Mail and Zip Mail Ltd.

Several companies have signed "access" agreements

with Royal Mail, allowing mail they have collected and sorted to be fed into Royal Mail's network for final delivery. Royal Mail made 2.4 billion access deliveries in 2006-07, compared to 1.2 billion the year before. In 2006-07, access mail was 12% of Royal Mail's total operational volume, with customer direct access making up just under half of this amount (source: Postcomm, with data from Royal Mail). In the nine months April - December 2007, access accounted for 20% of Royal Mail's volumes (this is now measured from revenue-derived volumes). 

New operators carried nearly 35 million items 'end-to-end' 

providing collection, sorting and delivery, in 2006-07 (source: Postcomm). This is a small decrease from 2005-06. However, we are aware that some operators are trialling end-to-end solutions in limited geographical areas.  

But Royal Mail still dominates postal services 

delivering 99% of volume in the addressed letters market (items weighing less than 350g and costing less than £1 to post) in 2006-07 (source: Royal Mail).