Zip codes to be introduced across NZ

As if recalling phone numbers, passwords, pin numbers and access codes is not enough, a new set of digits is about to be thrown into the mix.

New Zealand Post will announce tomorrow a new postal system for delivering to street addresses, introducing "zip codes" to the country for the first time.

Four digits will help an automated mail sorter to channel personally addressed envelopes to one of 1800 different zones of New Zealand. Within each of those zones, there will be about 10,000 separate mailbox addresses.

In a similar arrangement to telephone STD codes, the first number of the four-digit postal code will identify the general area of a person's address, with 0 signifying Northland to the North Shore and 9 the code for Dunedin, Otago and Southland.

Auckland city addresses will have a postcode that begins with 1, Manukau and East Auckland codes will start with the numeral 2 and Waikato/Bay of Plenty 3.

The remaining digits will narrow the focus of where the letter is destined, down to at least the suburb or street level.

NZ Post communications spokesman Richard MacLean said new suburbs and the burgeoning new "lifestyle" market of apartment and rural living made the system necessary.

Mr MacLean said there was no need to worry about not knowing the postcode.

"The mail is still going to get through."

About 1.8 million information sheets will arrive in every mailbox from Thursday, outlining the changes and specifying each address's new postal code.

The new system comes with an $80 million price tag. It will revolve around one of six "state-of-the-art" processing machines in six urban areas.

Mr MacLean confirmed hundreds of jobs throughout New Zealand would be lost as a result, many of them in provincial areas such as Tauranga, Taupo and New Plymouth.


IN THE POST

* 20 per cent of mail sent in the Auckland region is incorrectly addressed.

* There are 18 Beach Rds in Greater Auckland.

* Nationwide there are 60 George Sts and 50 Queen Sts.

* NZ Post processes about 1 billion items a year, and delivers to 1.5 million homes and businesses, plus 198,000 rural addresses and 240,000 private boxes.

* Since 1990, more than 450,000 new addresses have been created in New Zealand.