If you are serving overseas with Britain’s Military or Embassy services, it has become nearly impossible to use the internet to buy your daughter a CD of her favourite band for her birthday.

That’s because most modern businesses use Royal Mail Postcodes to capture the mailing address details – using the “Postcode Address File” – a huge database of every address in Britain. Using this file helps firms capture the address details speedily and accurately – so they can be sure the parcel quickly arrives at the right place. We have all been asked “What’s your postcode?“

Ramsey-based AFD Software Ltd process this complex database on behalf of Royal Mail, and distribute it to every organisation who needs to use it - Hospitals, Banks, Insurance firms, Trade Unions, Universities, and, of course, on-line retailers!

UK Forces use a different method of getting their post – the British Forces Post Office (BFPO) system, which is used to send materials wherever the forces are serving. AFD has now worked with Royal Mail and BFPO to provide a new set of special forces postcodes (they all begin “BF…”) for each BFPO address, in such a way that it will be easy for those who use Postcodes in their computer systems to accept these new ones.

Former Head of the British Army, General the Lord Dannatt said “Many thousands of men and women are sacrificially serving this country overseas. I hope that by the simple act of adding the new Royal Mail/BFPO Postcode data to your computer systems, you will support them and make it far easier for them to access products and services”