Mail handling

Letter handling is a pure process industry. Moving supplies conveyor systems for mail handling. There are exacting requirements for reliability, as sorting takes place against the clock and margins are tight - a letter posted at 18.00 should be delivered to the addressee the next day.

Letters that arrive at the Swedish Post Office's 13 sorting terminals are sorted automatically and then sent on to the addressees via mail plane and postmen.

The Stockholm-Årsta mail terminal, which is the Post Office's largest letter-handling centre, processes around 4.3 million letters every night.

During sorting one can follow the blue plastic boxes in which the letters arrive at the terminal. With the assistance of robots, the boxes are unloaded and set on conveyors. The boxes have their contents identified using bar codes and are then directed automatically to the right sorting machine. The conveyors are mounted from the ceiling in order to save floor space. After the letters are sorted by postcode and collected together according to their final destination, the boxes are transported to packing robots, which load them onto trolleys. These are then loaded onto trucks for transport to the mail plane. At the destination, postmen take charge of their mail for sorting and then deliver it to the addressee.

KNAPP-Moving has supplied conveyor systems to several of the Swedish Post Office's major terminals. The French Post Office has recently carried through extensive rationalisation by utilising 45 sorting machines. KNAPP-Moving has also supplied conveyor systems for these machines.

KNAPP-Moving supplies equipment for letter handling that releases floor space and offers high capacity, good ergonomics and flexibility, yet does not need time-consuming reloading. It also enables compact storage and simultaneous resorting.

Current applications / functions:
- Production
- Tote-bin handling
- Distribution-Sorting