Shipping dangerous goods (Online Business Account customers)

Limited amounts of certain dangerous goods can be sent via Royal Mail's services to locations not requiring ship or air travel. The total weight of shipments containing dangerous goods should not exceed 10kg.

Prior to creating any shipments, make sure to carefully read and follow government guidelines on shipping limited quantities of dangerous goods.

There are multiple ways of entering dangerous goods information into your order: Manual order creation, Sheet import, Click & Drop Desktop and Click & Drop API.

 

Manual order creation

Selecting a service

When you have created a new order and are applying postage to it, you must select an eligible service. All eligible services will have Dangerous goods listed as an enhancement. The list of services can be filtered to display only Dangerous goods enabled services.

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Entering dangerous goods details

Once you have selected a service that supports dangerous goods shipments, if the destination you are shipping to is eligible, you should be able to tick the Dangerous goods included box in Step 3. Choose service-specific options. This should create a new dialogue where you can enter the dangerous goods details.

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You can enter:

  • UN number: four-digit code that identifies hazardous materials and articles. If you are unsure of what code applies to your shipment, please consult the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe list of dangerous goods and limited quantity exceptions.
  • Dangerous goods quantity: enter the total quantity of whichever dangerous good you are shipping (for example, if you are sending two 1L bottles, the quantity you would enter is 2). Please note that different UN numbers are associated with different quantity units (g, kg, L etc.) so pay attention to the unit that is populated in this box.
  • Dangerous goods description: Describe, in your words, what it is that you are shipping.

 

Sheet import

Dangerous goods related fields can be mapped when importing your orders through a spreadsheet:

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The fields are:

  • Contains dangerous goods: Are there dangerous goods present in the shipment? Yes/No
  • UN number: four-digit code that identifies hazardous materials and articles. If you are unsure of what code applies to your shipment, please consult the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe list of dangerous goods and limited quantity exceptions.
  • Dangerous goods quantity: enter the total quantity of whichever dangerous good you are shipping in the order (for example, if you are sending two 1L bottles, the quantity you would enter is 2). Please note that different UN numbers are associated with different quantity units (g, kg, L etc.) as per the list of dangerous goods and limited quantity exceptions linked above.
  • Dangerous goods description: Describe, in your words, what it is that you are shipping.

Please note: If you want to assign a shipping service to your order on import, make sure that it is one that has the Dangerous goods enhancement as not all services support sending of dangerous goods.

 

Click & Drop Desktop

Dangerous goods details can also be entered through Click and Drop Desktop by adding them to your import spreadsheet.

If you have not mapped the dangerous goods related fields in Click and Drop you will have to go through the Sheet import process once to correctly assign the field(s) to the appropriate column(s). After that, the information should be imported automatically when your spreadsheet is dropped into the watch folder.

 

Click & Drop API

There are four fields relating to dangerous goods which can be populated when creating an order using the Click & Drop API:

  • containsDangerousGoods
  • dangerousGoodsUnCode
  • dangerousGoodsDescription
  • dangerousGoodsQuantity

For more information on field specifications, please visit our developer documentation.

 

Next steps

The label that is generated with your shipment should display the text ''DO NOT FLY" and should look similar to this:

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Please attach your label as well as any further markings as per government guidelines to your shipment.

Please note:

  • Posting Dangerous Goods is conditional on the customer successfully completing the Dangerous Goods onboarding process and complying with the restrictions required by Royal Mail. For further details please contact your Royal Mail Account Manager.
  • For safety reasons, only one type of dangerous good can be sent per shipment.
  • If the UN code you are trying to select is labelled cannot be shipped it means the shipping of that particular good is not permitted in limited quantities and therefore it cannot be transported via Royal Mail.
  • UN code descriptions starting with (I), (II) or (III) refer to that dangerous good being assigned to UN packing group I, II or III as per the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe list of dangerous goods and limited quantity exceptions.