Linda brings with her 21 years of experience at Royal Mail, where she held a number of senior management roles, working primarily as an account director for major financial services clients. She was heavily involved in developing and maintaining strategic relationships and growing account profitability.

Tom Kilroy, sales and business development director for Secured Mail, said: “Linda’s background and professional experience will be invaluable in helping us continue to grow our business, whilst shaping a high-performing, customer-focused team to meet the challenges ahead.”

Linda added: “Secured Mail is a dynamic company, achieving outstanding growth in the mail market. Having achieved second place in the Sunday Times Fast Track, this is a great time to be joining the company. I look forward to working in partnership with our clients and driving the on-going strategic direction of the business.”

The deal, for an undisclosed sum, increases Secured Mail’s share of the market and confirms its status as one of the major players in the UK postal sector.

The acquisition includes a mail depot in Crick, Northamptonshire, and 55 staff.

Existing clients of DHL Global Mail UK’s DSA unit include Debenhams, Mothercare and National Australia Group.

Mark Bigley, managing director of Secured Mail, said: “This is a significant acquisition for Secured Mail that clearly signals our ambitions for the future.

“DHL Global Mail UK’s network and national coverage in the Downstream Access market, allied to Secured Mail’s existing services and client-base, creates a significant player in the postal market and cements our position in the marketplace.

“This strategic acquisition offers existing and future customers access to the most transparent and visible postal operator in the UK.”

Paul Carvell, chairman of Secured Mail, said: “The deal reflects our strategy of organic growth combined with acquisitions that complement our business model. Teaming up with DHL Global Mail offers significant added value benefits to our customers and improves our offering to bring in yet more new business.”

Tom Kilroy, sales and business development director of Secured Mail said: “There are a number of synergies between both organisations. DHL Global Mail has an excellent team and a loyal client base and this deal provides a long-term commitment to both. We look forward to continuing our incredible growth and increased market presence in partnership with our customers.”

Secured Mail was founded in 2006 and earlier this month was ranked second on the Sunday Times Fast Track, the list of the UK’s Top 100 fastest-growing private companies. Turnover in 2011 was £48million.

Secured Mail’s head office is in Warrington, with facilities in Dartford, Kent. The company employs 150 and clients include Amazon, Centrica and Southern Water.

The postal operator was ranked at number two on the 2011 Fast Track Top 100 Fastest Growing Businesses, the definitive list published annually by the Sunday Times.

The placing in the prestigious list is based on Secured Mail’s astonishing turnover success.

In 2007, sales totalled £900,000, but in 2010 that had risen to £32.6million, an annual increase of 233 per cent.

Mark Bigley, managing director of Secured Mail, said: “This is recognition of five years’ hard work since we founded the company in 2006.

“Growing at such a rapid rate is not easy. It brings with it added challenges, like putting in place extensive infrastructure and employing additional personnel and resources.

“However, being placed second in the Fast Track list emphasises how far we have come and that the hard work is beginning to pay off.”

Representatives from Secured Mail will attend a formal event in May at the Oxfordshire home of Sir Richard Branson to celebrate the success.

Secured Mail handles over 400million items of mail a year for clients including British Gas owner Centrica, Southern Water and Amazon.

Postal operator Secured Mail has won a delivery contract with Centrica, the parent company of British Gas.

The fast-growing Downstream Access operator will handle Centrica’s 40million items of direct mail per year.

The deal offers Centrica the ability to track the progress of its mail across the delivery network.

Tom Kilroy, sales and business development director at Secured Mail, said: “Working with a household name like Centrica is a fantastic achievement and an exciting new contract win for the team.

“The key to us taking on the contract was the transparent, visible service we can offer. It proves that we are differentiating ourselves as a reliable, key operator in a very competitive postal market.”

Secured Mail already works with clients including Amazon, Southern Water and Domino’s Pizza.

Secured Mail managing director Mark Bigley has been named one of the North West’s top directors.

Mark, who founded the fast-growing postal operator in 2006, was named Liverpool Director of the Year at the 2011 Institute of Directors North West Director of the Year awards.

The accolade rounds off a successful 12 months for Mark and Secured Mail, which has included new contract wins and a rise in turnover.

Mark said: “This is my first award since starting Secured Mail. To get the recognition against some talented directors is fantastic, but I could not have developed a successful business without the truly forward-thinking senior management team and efforts from hard-working staff.

“The future is looking promising, with recent client wins and plans for further depots across the UK.

Mark founded the business in Maghull, near Liverpool, but Secured Mail’s head office is now based in Warrington.

Turnover in 2010 was £32.6million. It is expected to be about £48million in 2011.

Secured Mail has contracts with clients including Amazon, Southern Water and Domino’s Pizza.

Fast-growing postal business Secured Mail is launching two new services as it bids to surge ahead of competitors and diversify its customer offering.

The company is launching a door-to-door service for unaddressed mail and a first-class service in selected areas offering customers an alternative to existing providers.

The new provisions will further enhance Secured Mail’s reputation as an innovative, bespoke postal operator with an impressive client list in every sector.

The new door-to-door service, named Home Delivery, offers delivery of unaddressed mail at competitive prices, allowing customers full visibility of their postage spend.

The first-class service gives customers access to faster delivery times, with mail items distributed during Royal Mail’s morning round if they are collected the previous day.

Tom Kilroy, Secured Mail’s sales and business development director, said: “Our new door-to-door and first-class provision demonstrates our continued commitment to understanding and supporting customer requirements.

“By differentiating ourselves from our competitors we are able to continually innovate and respond to customer feedback in a positive, proactive way.

“We continue to grow rapidly in a very competitive marketplace. I am confident this will further enhance our overall offering as we strive to become the postal provider of choice for UK businesses.”

The first-class and Home Delivery services are due to launch in early 2012.

The announcement of the new services comes on the back of fresh contract wins and impressive growth at Secured Mail, one of the UK’s fastest-growing companies. The business is expected to unveil turnover for 2010/11 well up on 2009/10’s £32million.

Fast-growing postal operator Secured Mail has won an open tender for the collection and delivery of mail for Southern Water.

The deal will see Secured Mail handle transactional mail for Southern Water, which supplies two million homes in Sussex, Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

The postal operator will deliver more than six million Southern Water items a year via its hub in Dartford.

The contract win, which begins on the 1^st October, means Southern Water joins an increasing number of utilities benefiting from the unique Secured Mail offering and adds to their ever growing client list in a hugely competitive market.

Tom Kilroy, Secured Mail’s sales and business development director, said: “As one of the fastest growing businesses in the country, we are able to be adapt our offering to suit individual client requirements in a way which differentiates ourselves from the market. We are delighted to have secured the Southern Water business and will actively support them in achieving their objectives.”

Liz Barnard, service delivery manager at Southern Water, said: “Secured Mail is cost effective and will therefore make a significant difference to our spend on this area of our business.”

Tony Hawes and Tim Bruton will supervise existing business relationships and work on attracting new customers.

Secured Mail was founded in 2006 and specialises in handling bulk mail and packets. Turnover is expected to be £50million this year, up from £32million in 2010.

Tom Kilroy, Secured Mail’s Sales and Business Development Director said: “Both Tony and Tim and are welcome additions to the Team and bring with them extensive knowledge, skills and expertise in the Downstream Access market (DSA) to support our ever increasing growth strategy and we are delighted to havethem on board”.

Tony, who held a similar position at TNT, previously worked for UK Mail and Royal Mail whilst Tim also joins from TNT and previously held a managerial position at Yellow Pages.

Tony Hawes said: “I had been aware of Secured Mail for quite some time. I have been impressed with the phenomenal growth. The company has defined itself as a major competitor in the market. After meeting the team, it was a breath of fresh air to see how they operate.

“It’s not reinventing the wheel – the growth is flexible and sustainable, and is about giving customers exactly what they want.”

Tim Bruton said: “Secured Mail is a fast-growing business and is becoming more dominant within the market. I look forward to helping drive the company to a new level and with the exciting developments in the business plan, I can foresee Secured Mail taking more and more share of the market.”

James Wilkins, operations director of postal provider Secured Mail, explains how experiencing harsh reality led to better fleet management and a more efficient business.

Back in 2007, when Secured Mail was just a fledgling start-up, we made a key decision that was as important as almost any other we have taken. After outsourcing our mail deliveries – and experiencing unreliability and a total lack of quality control – we leased 15 vans and took on the same number of drivers.

It is hard to overestimate how important that move was. As a company we need to deliver items around the country on time. Our customers, for whom we shift bulk mail and packets, expect a reliable and transparent service. Yet when we were relying on an externalservice it was hard to guarantee that would always be the case.

The quality of the service we were getting was sub-standard. It was not as reliable as we had hoped and it had the potential to damage our brand. As a director, you expect to be in control but that was far from the case. The lack of ownership was a major problem for us. The drivers were subcontractors, which meant we had little or no control over the management and the training of them. That makes it hard to guarantee quality. Another downside was that we couldn’t have Secured Mail liveries on our vehicles.

However, the crippling issue was the cost of outsourcing. Compared to running your own fleet it is far more expensive. In the embryonic days of Secured Mail that cost was simply unsustainable. However, despite that, we are now a much more mature company and we would not rule out outsourcing again in the future. I am glad to report that switching over to our own fleet was one of the most painless parts. It was a smooth transition, with only small mistakes made. Each of our initial 15 vans cost about £20,000 a month and we also had 15 drivers, at about £20,000 a year. However, crucially, the switch has been a profitable choice for the business.

Our own fleet now delivers over 400million items of mail a year to 56 Royal Mail inward mail offices across the country. The key, as mentioned, is control. The move almost pushed us to the wall but we learnt from that and we now have the means to take all the items we collect from customers to Royal Mail regional sorting offices. Its‘final mile’ delivery service then sees the mail to its destination.

Another big consideration when you are running a fleet is geography. Petrol costs, especially at current prices, are a huge outlay for any business that relies on vehicles, so getting location right is important. Secured Mail was founded in Aintree, Liverpool, and for four years that site served as our head office and depot. However, we recently opened up a 25,000 sq ft warehouse in Warrington. It has made a huge impact.

Warrington is only 20 miles down the road from Liverpool and is an ideal location for us. The new depot is beside the M6 and M62, offering our team of drivers fast access to the motorway network. The move has saved us thousands of pounds a month in running costs. If you have a fleet of drivers, it simply makes no sense for them to be driving 20 minutes just to get on to the motorway.

Like many firms, we learnt the hard way about how best to run the business. As a rule – and this is not rocket science – I would say that the more control you have, the better. That is certainly the case with fleet management. Running vehicles inefficiently can be a serious drain on your bottom line. After a few missteps we found the right solution. It has greatly improved our results and customer satisfaction.

James Wilkins, operations director at Warrington-based Secured Mail, says the postal operators who prosper will be those that embrace technology.

While postal companies grapple with how to deal with changes in the market – and the continuing uncertainty surrounding Royal Mail – technological changes are playing an increasingly large role in how customers choose their provider.

Secured Mail is an established player the field. We were founded in 2006, although our turnover should reach £50million this year. By accessing Royal Mail Wholesale, we specialise in handling bulk mail and small parcels. A key part of our success has been our software solution, DocketHub. We have worked hard to offer a bespoke software solution to give clients a user-friendly and non-invasive approach to get mail either sorted or unsorted into Secured Mail’s network. We offer a simple solution for the customer.

DocketHub also allows customers to track their mail at every point of the process – it is a360-degree view and no one else can offer that. The advantage for us is thevisibility that it provides to our clients. We believe in partnerships and DocketHub means we are 100 per cent transparent and secure. It is a case oftechnology keeping us a step ahead.

Similarly, we are now offering clients the chance to track unsorted mail that goes into Royal Mail. With this service, we take an image of a piece of mail, tag it and then keep a record of it. It is then kept on our image database, meaning Secured Mail can track its very move. The great advantage here is that our software allows us to keep a record of exactly when a piece of mail was delivered. This is trackable through a web-based portal so every customer will be able to see processingtimes and the handover to Royal Mail. So, for example, a large organisation can keep a PDF containing information and the proof of the mail going through the machine and handover to Royal Mail. Already at Secured Mail we have attracted new clients, such as financial organisations, for whom it is massively beneficial to have these details at hand. It also offers extra reassurance.

Many observers believe that hybrid mail, where documents are emailed or transferred to a central centre, printed off and then sent in hard copy, has the potential to be a major development in the sector. However, at present it is far from being a mature market. But is it not difficult to see why postal companies see it as a major opportunity and many will be scrambling to get a foot in what could be an important emerging market.

Hybrid mail would be attractive to big companies and is something Secured Mail is actively looking into. There are obvious cost-saving benefits for major businesses. For example, take one of Secured Mail’s clients, a leading insurance firm. It has offices around the country, each of which produces letters for policyholders, which are then printed and sent out individually. With hybrid mail, all mail can be printed to one central production centre and sent from there.

It is easy to spot the benefits of this for a large company. With hybrid mail comes continuity in what is sent out which cannot be matched when letters and parcels are distributed from offices and sites across the country. There is also the saving that comes from economies of scale: when the amount of printer toner saved is taken into consideration, along with other everyday office items, the cost to a business of sending out mail en masse comes down considerably. The printing functioncould even be done by an intermediary company, an outsourcing that could potentially offer huge savings.

However, as mentioned, hybrid mail is not yet a mature market. People, whether as individuals or in businesses, still like to print something off and pop it in the post themselves. There is also, whenever the internet is involved, a worry over safety. However, the technology used would be similar to that offered by internet banking. Security remains of paramount importance and there is no reason for that to be compromised.

While parts of the postal market continue to shrink, the way people shop and use technology continues to provide opportunities for companies with the correct strategy. Fewer items of transactional mail are being sent, but direct mail and marketing is increasing as internet shopping takes shoppers away from the high street. That is dictating what type of mail is transported around Britain every day.

Mail from internet orders is a huge growth area, even despite the decline in other parts of the market. The providers that prosper in the long-term will be those that have the flexibility and strategy to adapt to the changes and offer customers a solution tailored to their needs.