Postmen and women across the county pulled out all the stops to deliver this huge mailbag of items in the weeks leading up to Christmas 2007.
The round-the-clock operation was part of a 'First Class' effort across Northern Ireland that saw Royal Mail handle approximately 60 million items over the festive period – some 2O million of which were Christmas gifts and greetings.
Michael Kennedy, Area General Manager for Royal Mail in Northern Ireland, said:
"Customers depend on us, especially at Christmas when the average mailbag rises from around 2 million a day to over 3.2 million, and our postmen and women have worked incredibly hard to ensure that everything posted before the last recommended posting dates arrived on time.
"We plan the Christmas operation 12 months in advance and, this year we employed over 400 additional staff, hired 120 extra vans and put on four more flights a day to get the mail collected, sorted and delivered to all 740,000 addresses in Northern Ireland as quickly as possible," Mr Kennedy added.
As well as working to deliver letters, cards and packets posted by the latest recommended dates, employees across the UK put in extra efforts to make sure that many millions of items posted late also reached customers before Christmas.
The number of parcels handled by Parcelforce Worldwide in Northern Ireland also rose, from an average of 4,500 a day to 6,000 a day with over 200,000 parcels delivered in the run-up to Christmas.
E-CHRISTMAS
As predicted, Royal Mail has also had its best ever e-Christmas, delivering a record- breaking 120 million items ordered online, double the number handled just three years ago.
This increase in deliveries reflects an Internet shopping boom, adding up to a staggering £15 billion spent online in the ten weeks leading up to Christmas day.
But, as Michael Kennedy explained, the popularity of e-mails and text messaging has done nothing to halt the sending of Christmas cards.
"The traditional posted Christmas card has held onto its position as the preferred festive greeting and people clearly still appreciate this personal touch of sending and receiving a card at this time of year."
Sending a Christmas wish–list to Santa Claus is also as popular as ever. This year, Royal Mail handled a super-size Santa mailbag of over 750,000 letters from children all over the world.
