Big changes are afoot for Royal Mail, who have announced a £1.8billion transformation programme which will be rolled out over the next five years.
The plan has been designed with customer service improvement in mind as well as digital initiatives, network enhancements and new ways of working to deliver more productivity and efficiency.
It involves money being spent on new technology such as fully-automated parcel hubs, Devon Live reported.
Exeter's depot has seen a big increase in the amount of parcels they are handling. Letters are around four percent down year on year.
With the way people use the post changing and with more people shopping online, Royal Mail is making some big changes to stay ahead of the curve.
The Devon mail centre, which handles around four million items in outward mail a week, has installed three new parcel conveyors this year to help with the influx.
Stephen Davis, plant manager for the Exeter Mail Centre, started as a postal cadet with Royal Mail at the age of 16. He's now been with the company for 29 years.
"The main change for us now is we are moving towards a parcel market - we are starting to invest in some parcel automation so we’ve got some parcel conveyors here which we use."
He added: “Clearly for us there’s been a huge switch to parcels. We handle 51 per cent of the market in parcels over all, but what we are seeing is a shift in size of the parcels.
"Whereas before [we'd have more] standard letter box parcel, we're now seeing an awful lot more above shoe box size.”
The new parcel conveyors which are new for 2019 are simple pieces of machinery - but they maximise efficiency.
