The social housing sector is set to benefit from savings of up to 50% on their mail costs following the appointment of hybrid mail partners Inkfish Services and DeskDirect Global to offer low-carbon, high-speed postal services to 620 of the UK’s social housing organisations.

Social housing purchasing and advisory organisation, Procurement for Housing (PfH), has awarded Inkfish and DeskDirect Global the right to provide their services to social housing organisations, including Housing Associations throughout Britain as part of a new Postal Services Agreement. Housing organisations are expected to make immediate savings on their mail costs by replacing what are currently labour intensive manual processes with a fully automated service.

Inkfish and DeskDirect Global’s service enables users to send mail - from letters to direct mail and marketing materials - electronically to the most conveniently located print fulfilment centre where it is printed, folded, inserted, sealed and sorted in accordance with ISO27001 secure transfer of data and ISO14001 environmental standards at Inkfish’s 60,000 sq ft production plant in Coventry, ready for final delivery into the postal service.

"We knew Procurement for Housing was looking for a sustainable approach that delivered better value and reduced the environmental impact of their mail activities. With our solution they can do all that with tremendous effect by considerably reducing the number of mail trucks needed to travel the country collecting and distributing documents from multiple organisations," explains Mark Worsley, CEO of DeskDirect Global.

Using the service’s specialist document composition software, housing organisations will be able to create all types of mail items including statement, bulk and one-off letters, and full colour marketing material. They can then send them for printing, processing and delivery via a secure online portal which allows them to track their order from printing to delivery.

Other benefits include electronic archiving which allows users to store complex documents safely and securely for up to seven years, full inscription technology to prevent breaches in the security of the personal data they contain and reporting options to enable greater control and more accurate budgeting. According to research carried out by PfH, housing organisations send an average of 194 letters per day, each spending in the region of £40,856 per year on the stationery, printing, collecting, processing and postal costs all involved in sending mail. As a whole the sector spends over £139 million per year on mailings.

Organisations that use the hybrid mail service offered by Inkfish and DeskDirect Global are each expected to save in the region of £20,000 per year.

"Sustainability is an increasingly important consideration for social landlords. We want to provide housing organisations with clear ways in which they can reduce their impact on the environment through procurement. The Postal Services agreement presents the sector with an opportunity to reduce their postal costs AND meet their green objectives." says Julie Craig, Director of PfH.

Michael Howard, Business Development Director of Inkfish, says: "Becoming part of PfH’s Postal Services agreement is a tremendous opportunity for us to promote our service to an audience of ideal users. With the capacity to produce 300 million documents a year and plans to expand our facilities further, we’re perfectly placed to embrace this contract and many more besides.

"Unlike traditional postal service providers, our solution fulfils all our users’ mail requirements without them having to leave their PC,”" says Mark Worsley

"Not only is the service we’re offering better for the environment, but it also opens up organisations of any size to important postal discounts because of the efficiencies of scale that that the service provides by collecting mail from multiple sources and processing them at the same printing plant."

DeskDirect Global is a hybrid mail specialist and business division of Australia Post. The service was developed by parent company and print software expert, PrintSoft, to cut the cost, time and environmental impact of sending mail through the post both domestically and internationally by transmitting documents electronically for the greatest part of their journey. It was designed as a solution to the considerable inefficiencies of generating mail on desktop computers and transporting it from multiple senders, often over national borders, by road, rail, sea and air.

Inkfish was originally developed as a mail production centre for breakdown plan provider and parent company ,Domestic & General, and is now capable of producing over 300 million pieces of mail each year for independent clients through its custom built document production facility in Coventry. The production facilities work to ISO27001 secure transfer of data and information transfer protocol and embrace ISO 14001 environmental standards.