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Australia Post halts ALL seamail entering the country due to surge in banned items
- Australia Post has frozen seamail delivery after growing criminal activity
- The delivery company introduced a temporary suspension at the beginning of October
- Parcels arriving by air will not be affected, an Australia Post spokeswoman said
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Australia Post has temporarily suspended mail arriving by sea due to a growing number of banned items being shipped to the country.
The company began the suspension in early October and has promised that it will not have any impact on air-arrival mail handling.
Packages that were not in transit before the suspension began were returned to the sender’s address.
Mail entering Australia on freighters has been temporarily suspended due to a surge in criminals attempting to smuggle illegal items into the country (above a freighter)
Some packages that were not in transit before the suspension started are returned to senders (stock photo of a postman above)
Australia Post will continue to process and deliver seamail that was in transit before announcing the freeze.
An Australia Post spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia that the company is working to get shipping mail processing back to normal ‘as soon as possible’.
“Due to an increasing number of banned mail entering Australia by sea, Australia Post has temporarily halted incoming Sea Mail as of October 1,,” she said.
“The increase in Sea Mail volume was a direct result of COVID air restrictions and reduced aircraft capacity.”
The vast majority of deliveries are sent by air freight, while sea freight is the cheaper option for sending packages to Australia from abroad.
Sea mail may be the cheaper alternative, but it has a longer transit time.
Australia Post will continue to process and deliver seamail that was in transit before announcing the freeze (above an Australia Post store in Meadowbank)
Freight handling at seaports takes significantly longer and Border Force professionals have to sort the mail manually.
Australia Post has only one local facility to carry out such sorting.
“Australia Post currently has only one facility that can operate Sea Mail, and significant delays and security issues have occurred due to the number of prohibited items arriving and requiring intervention,” the spokeswoman said.
Australia Post is in the process of reviewing its Sea Mail capacity with a view to lifting the suspension as soon as possible.
“Australia Post is still processing Sea Mail containers in transit at the time the suspension was announced, and there remains no impact on mail items shipped by air to Australia or items shipped by sea from Australia.”
“Australia Post apologizes for the inconvenience during this time.”