The post center in Pasila sorts two million items every day. HS’s photo reportage shows the distance letters travel between mailboxes.
Helsinki the post center in Pohjois-Pasila is the heart of all paper shipments in Finland. Post centers that sort paper mail are also in Oulu and Kuopio, but Helsinki is the largest of them.
HS visited the center, where machines punch numbers and kilometer-long conveyor belts move blue boxes from one place to another.
An underground corridor runs between Posti’s modern office building and the sorting center built in the late 1970s. It is known that running exercises have been held in the long corridor when the training opportunities for athletes were not yet at the current level. The amount of paper shipments is constantly decreasing, but a massive sorting center is still needed.
The Nicknames of the premises originate from the 1970s. The center has more than a thousand employees, and during the Christmas season the number increases by another six hundred. They don’t can jam, they sort paper mail. Every day, the center processes about two million shipments, which is the majority of the country’s paper mail. Official mail is also printed and packed into letters here. If the recipient does not want their letter in paper form, we upload it to the Oma posti application in electronic form. Packages from the capital region are sorted at the Vantaa logistics center.
Long sorting machines, roller shutters and blue plastic boxes dominate the general view of the hall. The turquoise machine is called MSM, multi sorting machine. It sorts letters and magazines in two batches. First, a rough sorting is done, then an even finer adjustment. The machine is three years old, and it is still constantly being trained. The machine sorts 30,000–40,000 shipments per hour. An experienced human sorter reaches a speed of about five hundred shipments per hour. There are a total of nine MSM machines in the Helsinki center.
The days are not the same in terms of the number of shipments. The change of the moon is important for many, because then it is payday. Many people still receive a paper payslip. Companies want their advertising delivered at a specific time, while magazines stick to their traditional publication dates. The operating capacity has to live with it. Not all sorting machines are constantly on. The amount of paper mail has decreased, and there is no longer enough to distribute every day. Now the busiest sorting days are Tuesdays and Thursdays.
After the first sorting, the mails are in bundles roughly sorted by direction. The cardboard intermediate cards contain a code that tells the machine which area’s mail is now being processed. The bundles have to be fed into the machine manually, but after that they start an automatic rotation along the machine’s belts. Inga Rossi feeds bundles into the machine.
The machine creates ready-made distribution bundles from shipments. Since the papers pass through tight rollers in the machine, you should not put keys, for example, in the letters. They do not bend smoothly between the rollers, but tear holes in the paper. Sometimes the rollers make marks on the cards. Then it’s time to change the rollers. Sometimes, during maintenance, you will find mail that has fallen inside the machine. A bigger reason for undelivered letters than a machine devouring letters is still humans. For example, a misdelivered letter may never reach its destination if the recipient does not return it to Posti.
The machine is wise, but also picky. If the address does not completely match what it expects, the machine tries to correct the error. If it is not successful, the transmission is transferred to a person. From mail sent by companies and authorities, the machine reads codes that outsiders cannot interpret. The codes are ready for company and official mail. Codes are added to letters sent by private individuals at the center. Jaana Mantila transfers the finished bundles to be packed. The person packs the bundles and puts a label on them that tells which distribution area the bundle is on its way to. They may not be photographed, as Posti must protect people’s privacy carefully.
In the corridor that goes around the hall, there are rows of different mailboxes. They are practice pieces that are used to test, for example, new delivery bags. The bag must not be in the way when the letter is put in the door. In many other countries, mail in apartment buildings is distributed in the lower hall, but in Finland the most common are the hatches in the door of each apartment.
If the machine can’t sort the shipment, it’s up to humans. If the sorting is not successful after many attempts and steps, a letter will be sent to the office of the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom in Jyväskylä for clarification. If necessary, the transmission can also be opened there. In any case, the investigation will delay the shipment by at least a couple of days. Asthaloy Nyman brings letters for hand sorting. For example, thick letters and those that did not fit on the machine are sorted by hand. Hand sorting is done along with other work, in three shifts, i.e. practically around the clock. There are many more employees at Christmas. Christmas cards are still holding their ground, although the trend in their number is also decreasing. Last year, 14 million Christmas cards were distributed.
In sorting, the shelves are divided by zip code. The first two numbers tell the direction. 00 means Helsinki. The following numbers specify the range. Posti is responsible for the numbers, but the municipalities can choose what name the area will be called. Postal code areas do not always correspond to city area boundaries. For example, Keski-Töölö is not an official part of the city, but it has its own postal code.
If the shipment does not yet have a sorting code, it will be created at the post office. For example, letters sent by private individuals do not have the code ready. The shipment is fed into the machine, whose camera reads the address and a small jet of ink prints a barcode-like line on top. In the new stamps, the code is already ready. Such shipments are processed in the amount of dozens of rolls per day. If the machine does not recognize the address, a human will help. For example, a missing apartment number or an unclearly written address will cause the machine to push the issue to a human to solve. Then the person compares the written address with the information about the recipient in the database. For this reason, it is important that address changes are made in time and that the full address of the recipient is marked on the shipment.
When everything is ready, the delivery bundles are waiting for their exporter in roll cages. The center’s halls are surrounded by eighty loading doors, from which letters, cards and magazines continue their journey around the country.
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