ROYAL MAIL is to purchase a further 7,000 light vans from Ford in a new contract which will extend into the next century. Worth £64 million at showroom prices, the deal comprises 6,300 Escort vans and 1,000 Courier Kombis for delivery over the next three years.

The majority of the Escorts will be the familiar pillar box red Escort 55s for mail delivery and collection, but a proportion will be white Escort 75s for Romec - the Royal Mail's engineering division. Royal Mail operates a fleet of 28,500 vehicles and has been buying Escort vans since the mid-1980s and this lates renewal of the deal accounts for some two thirds of the organisation's light van requirements.

The Kombis are a recent addition and replace larger LDV vans, which are being phased out as employee transport in favour of the smaller Fiesta-based vehicles. They have the dual role of taking postal workers to the start of their delivery walks and ferrying extra sacks of mail to them en route. All vehicles are powered by Ford's 1.8 naturally-aspirated diesel engine and will cover about 40,000 miles during the three years they will spend on the fleet.