Minister 'doesn't hold out hope' of overturning plan to scrap Jersey air mail deliveries

Air freight shipments which don't rely on the Royal Mail's flights to Jersey would also be at risk if the route is scrapped, a cargo-handling firm has warned.

Last month, Jersey Post and Royal Mail announced they were in talks to find alternative ways to bring post into the island to cut costs and reduce emissions.

The boss at OceanAir has said that without the daily mail flights, it would likely cease trading - leaving Jersey Airport without staff to handle incoming airborne shipments for other delivery firms.

The company deals with more than just letters and parcels, but also blood and organ samples, medication and animals moving to Jersey Zoo.

Chris Bee from Ocean Air, said: "I think that will cause the island an infrastructure problem because we don't only handle the mail plane, we handle cargo from Blue Islands, British Airways, we handle the DHL aircraft.

"So we handle critical infrastructure, and the ability to do that will disappear, causing a gap in services and potentially the inability to carry any air freight."

A public consultation into Royal Mail's proposed changes recently ended, but Jersey's Economic Development Minister told ITV Channel it is likely that the island's daily mail flights will come to an end in August.

• Kirsten Morel says work is ongoing to find a 'practical solution' to preserve timely deliveries to Jersey.

Deputy Kirsten Morel said: "Although I don't hold out a great deal of hope that the consultation will change anything from Royal Mail's perspective, I have written to them explaining my concerns. I know businesses have too.

"It is possible Royal Mail may reconsider as a result of that - but let's be realistic, I think the way forward is to find practical solutions to this problem and so far that's exactly what we're working on.

"The kind of worst-case scenario is still some distance away."

Switching the island's freight service from plane to ferry would mean parcels and letters would take at least two days to reach Jersey from the UK.

A delay in delivery services has left local businesses fearing they will now be put at a disadvantage on the global market.

Businesses will have a matter of weeks to find alternative arrangements if the mail plane is stopped in August, which is causing high uncertainty in the industry.

Chris Le Lion, owner of online retailer DMS Ltd, said: "It's an incredibly short timeline, this was one of the main problems we had with this.

"We've had a business that should be using us to ship many items to the UK using our services, they've now paused that change because of the slower delivery times they could get potentially in the UK staying in the mainland, so yeah it's going to affect us greatly." ITV Channel has approached Jersey Post for comment but said they will not be able to comment on specifics until the results of the consultation are in.

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