Responsible for delivering essential mail to more than 800,000 companies and 4.5 million households across Sweden, Posten Sverige AB (Swedish Post) operates within Europe's largest parcel network, direct parcel distribution, and represents the highest European standard in parcels handling.

With an ever increasing demand on their service and to supplement their existing five logistics terminals, Posten Sverige AB's management decided to extend their distribution network by adding a further high-capacity distribution centre in the town of Malmö.

Built on a brown field site, the new Posten Sverige Malmö site employs over 200 postal workers and comprises computer driven, state-of-the art automated mail sorting equipment, enabling an increase in capacity from 6,000 up to 20,000 parcels each hour.

A major part of the new facility's operational requirements was certification of its security standards and final qualification by Posten Sverige AB. In order to fulfill these necessities, senior security consultant, Tord Samuelsson, produced a comprehensive tender document that would fulfill the required specification criteria. Samuelsson selected Siemens security systems to deliver a comprehensive security solution that comprised intruder alarms, access control and a CCTV system.

Following a comprehensive audit of the site, Siemens installed 40 fixed cameras, used to monitor the site's interior and exterior loading and unloading areas. In addition, six high-speed day/night switching dome cameras are deployed to monitor service yards. These cameras monitor the heavy amount of traffic flow through the facility, giving management the ability to make operational decisions on the distribution of mail vehicles around the site.

Visual information from the system's cameras is transmitted to the control room using Network video technologies' (NVT) unshielded twisted pair (UTP) video transmission technology. Harald Drewke of Siemens explains "Swedish Post's primary requirement for the CCTV system was to produce the highest quality images, in real-time, for review in the control room. We chose NVT technology due to its excellent performance and our site-specific demand for high-quality video transmission over long distances. Inside the building, each camera's position is dictated by the machines and processes it observes. In reality, this means that camera cable distances are between 100 metres and up to 1km away."

Using NVT active transmitters and receivers allowed Siemens technicians to tune each individual camera video signal for optimum picture quality. NVT's receivers employ the feature of fully variable potentiometer adjustment, allowing easy and accurate adjustments to video signal gain over varying distances from camera-to-control room.
Drewke continues "We didn't considered using an IP solution as most of the cameras are outdoor where an IP network is not practical, we also needed to supply the demand for recorded images with the highest resolution."

As mail-sorting technology develops and the future demands on the Malmö facility inevitably increase, Posten Sverige's management acknowledge that the internal arrangement of the factory floor will evolve. This evolution may require multiple camera relocations and additional cameras to be added. To cater for this, Siemens included multiple spare pairs in the CCTV UTP cable network to allow easy relocation and additional cameras to be wired-in, 'future proofing' the system. The use of NVT and UTP technology allowed this economical and efficient route for future system expansion versus the traditional use of coax cable, where completely new cable runs would be required to accommodate the relocation of cameras.

Drewke concludes "We pride ourselves on developing long-term relationships with our end-user customers. It is reassuring to know that we have a technical partner in NVT who share a passion for supplying the best product technology. Their comprehensive equipment provides us with a very cost-effective and reliable UTP CCTV video transmission solution."