NZ Post sort-out brings job fears

Significant job losses are expected as a result of New Zealand Post's proposed $35 million nationwide technology upgrade.

NZ Post letters group manager Peter Fenton said it was too early to say how the company's 2500 full and part-time mail-processing staff around the country would be affected by the new technology, but Engineers Union secretary Andrew Little said job losses were on the cards.

"We are expecting ... quite a significant effect on staff."

NZ Post intends merging two big Auckland mail centres into a new mega-site, with the Waikato and Christchurch getting new mail centres as part of the five-year project.

Fenton said NZ Post would be able to be more specific in 12 to 18 months about "job changes and impacts".

The 2500 mail-processing staff do not include posties.

The jobs of 650 people at the Auckland mail centre in Victoria Street West and the South Auckland mail centre in Wiri will potentially be affected by the amalgamation of their operations into a purpose-built, single-floor new building in three years.

Fenton said about four sites for the new facility were under consideration but he would not say where.

He said the multi-storey Victoria Street West mail centre, which has a capital valuation of $15.5 million, was not big enough for the six new barcoding machines and bar code readers required for Auckland.

The six machines will form three production lines, each 70m long and made up of a bar coder and a bar code reader.

About one million pieces of mail are processed there nightly.

The Wiri mail centre, with a capital valuation of $3.3 million, processes about 750,000 items a day.

All up, the new Auckland mail centre will be 16,000sq m.

Fenton would not say how much the new buildings would cost but the funding was not part of the technology upgrade.

NZ Post is buying 10 bar coding machines and 10 bar code readers from Japanese company NEC to replace 12 ageing processing machines at "metro" mail centres in Auckland, South Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Petone in Wellington and Christchurch.

NEC will also provide software.

A new 6000sq m Waikato mail centre, to be built in Duke Street in south-west Hamilton, will get one new production line, Wellington will get two, Palmerston North one, Christchurch two and the Dunedin mail centre will be automated for the first time with one production line. Wellington will be the first to get the new technology, early next year.

Asked if smaller mail centres such as Tauranga or Rotorua would be closed as a result of the metro centres becoming bigger and more efficient, Fenton said there was no intention to do so but their "processing component will change over time".

"For some time we've been moving mail from New Plymouth to Palmerston North for processing, and from Tauranga and Rotorua to Hamilton.

"If anything, the investment is going to accelerate some of those trends."

The Timaru and Wanganui mail-processing centres had been closed because they were close to "metro" mail centres.

Fenton said manual processing would still be needed at centres such as Tauranga, because some mail could not be machine sorted.

The international mail centre at Auckland airport will be unaffected.

NZ Post, which has annual revenues of just over $1 billion, delivered one billion items of mail last year.

The existing machines, some now 12 years old, process between 20,000 and 30,000 letters an hour.

Fenton said the new machines would not be any faster, but there would be a big improvement in sorting accuracy.

NZ Post's application of processing technology was significantly behind world standards with only about 25 per cent of mail fully machine sorted, compared with the European average of 80 per cent.

The present machines each sorted to 120 destinations whereas that would be increased to 400 with the new machines.