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    Royal Mail bringing in huge change for UK households ‘for the first time’

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    By James Rodger

    Copyright birminghammail

    Royal Mail bringing in huge change for UK households 'for the first time'

    Royal Mail is set to open 8,000 high street shops – for the first time – in a huge £43.9million deal. 8,000 Collect+ convenience stores will be rebranded to Royal Mail shops following investment into the parcel service business. Royal Mail ’s owner International Distribution Services announced it had acquired a 49% stake in Collect+ with a £43.9 million investment.The new high street shops will be open for collecting, sending and returning parcels. They’ll be selling Royal Mail postage for the first time and will have extended hours including evenings and weekends. That means it will be more convenient than ever for people to send off their parcels. READ MORE New 63-day council tax rule coming for millions of UK households Alistair Cochrane, Royal Mail’s chief executive, said: “The launch of the Royal Mail Shop brand creates a new and improved high street destination for all of our customers’ parcel needs in one location. “This investment is one of the ways we’re making Royal Mail more convenient.” Collect+ currently lets you drop off or pick up parcels at more than 13,000 locations across the country. It comes as Royal Mail has cheered returning to an underlying annual profit for the first time in three years despite a “competitive and challenging” backdrop. In its first set of figures since the group’s £3.6 billion takeover by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, owner International Distribution Services (IDS) said Royal Mail delivered underlying earnings, excluding voluntary redundancy costs, of £12 million for the year to March 31. This compared with losses of £336 million the previous year. But with redundancy costs included, Royal Mail still remained in the red with underlying operating losses of £8 million, it said. IDS said the underlying improvement at Royal Mail came “despite an increasingly competitive and challenging trading environment”. The wider group, which also owns the GLS parcel business, reported underlying earnings of £278 million, against losses of £28 million in the previous year.

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