We've received an announcement from Royal Mail about the Gold Medal stamps distributed to Post Offices in northern England.
"... our planning produced dividends on Saturday afternoon when our North of
England printer encountered some difficulties with its printing plates.
As these
difficulties couldn’t be rectified over the weekend Royal Mail
implemented one of its contingencies and moved production of issues
GMW27 Mo Farah, GMW28 Luke Campbell and GMW29 Anthony Joshua for the
North East and North West of England to our Midlands Printer.
"The last Minisheet printed by our North of England (Preston) printer was therefore GMW26 Ed McKeever."
As contributors have reported, Post Offices in the north received supplies of the last three gold medal stamps from the Midland (Solihull) printer.
Just a little factoid for your amusement: I had been visiting London in early August and had picked up the first block of 18 minisheets from the post office in Blackheath. I asked for the bottom minisheet for the printers' location etc - they hadn't noticed this, but were grateful for the info, especially the GMW number for keeping track of them! The printers' location was London, as you might expect.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and kids were home in Thurso (on the north coast opposite Orkney) in the second half of August and I asked her to pick up the remaining sheets for me. All 11 sheets printed in Swindon! Not sure what that says about Royal Mail's distribution system - Edinburgh would have seemed more cost-effective.
Thanks for the comment.
DeleteIt's difficult to keep up with so many posts and so many comments, but elsewhere we have concluded that only the 'next-day' POs were serviced from the regional printers.
The next round of deliveries, to the 4500 other POs, were delivered by Special Delivery, not courier, through normal channels from Post Office Supplies, and were printed nearby in Swindon.