British firms are increasingly turning away from Royal Mail and instead looking to private parcel delivery firms such as Parcel2Go.com.

That's the view of David Smith, director of operations at IMRG. He said that strikes in the latter part of 2009 had caused "a lot of frustration" on the part of retailers and consumers.

As a result, he said that other carriers had enjoyed a boost in interest - and had reacted well to the spike in demand.

He added that the level of disruption had been minimised by the use of alternative courier services.