Our collectors from the Singapore Postcrossing Network were invited to a tour of the new Mail Processing Centre on 23 March 2018. Below are some of the excerpts taken from the article that was sent in by Mr Poh Kian Hwee.
It marked the first time that one steps into the SingPost Mail Processing Centre - a milestone for anyone acquainted with stamps. The tour kicked off with a short briefing at the Philatelic Counter by our tour leader James Cheong. James first gave an introduction to the postal system comprising 83 postal sectors in Singapore. As he spoke on, we learnt about the extensiveness of SingPost network coverage - with more than 800 collection points islandwide, including 57 post offices evenly distributed in the different regions.
After a quick orientation, we were first introduced to the CFC ( Culler Facer Canceller ) machine. The CFC machine is Toshiba built, capable of processing 30 thousand mail per hour, and runs Mondays to Fridays from 12 noon till midnight. It processes single stamp mails which include single stamp envelop, Business Reply Service ( BRS ) mail and franked mail ( meter stamp ).
The most exciting part of the 3rd floor walk is the visit to the Returned Letters Unit where things go wrong, get fixed. All kinds of interesting materials end up in SingPost mail boxes, and undetermined addresses are ascertained in this unit. The staff also showed us a few stacks of Identity Cards, passports and driving licenses, alledgedly a few hundred such items go through the post every year and SingPost diligently returns them to the respective authorities. The tour took one and half hours, 50% longer than we anticipated, credit to the many inquisitive queries from the group. It was indeed an eye opening experience to learn about the hard work behind the scenes by SingPost staff. Thank you SingPost!
