PHD’s spend included replacing three of its five Pitney Bowes - now rebranded as Bluecrest - APS inserters with Bluecrest MPS inserters, which have eight intelligent insert stations each, and handle continuous and cut-sheet forms.

“They’re far above and beyond what we had before,” said Kevin Dunn, business development director at PHD.

The MPS inserters, installed in November 2022, were followed in December by a new Bluecrest Vantage, replacing a pair of Olympus 2 sorters.

“It has been unbelievable,” said Dunn, adding that the firm has been running envelopes through the Vantage at a rate of around 40 million per year. The machine can sort to 48 different destinations, allowing PHD to perform all sorting in-house and pass savings on to customers. 

“It has made a hell of a difference, but it was a significant investment.

“Royal Mail require 4,000 envelopes before you hit the mail sort threshold - we give mail sort to people for less than 1,000 envelopes, because we consolidate all our mail through the Vantage,” he said.

The investment has won PHD new clients, one of which will see the company process 12 million envelopes for it in a year, and Dunn was confident in the firm’s growth, which has been a constant despite the trials of the past five years.

In 2021, the company turned over £9m, growing to £10.4m in 2022, and is looking at hitting £12.5m in 2023, representing growth of over 15% each year.

Despite this growth, PHD has hardly had to increase its headcount. During Covid, the firm dropped from 60 to 52 employees as it consolidated its business - in the years since, however, it has only had to add two employees, taking it to 54.