Antecedents

In April 2001 Correos y Telegrafos announced the public tender for the acquisition and installation of three lots of postal vending machines. 

There was no winner for two lots of this public tender, precisely this ones including the automatic vending machine ATMs ; the only prototype presented was this one offered by the French company Amiel Electronix.

Despite all it, Spanish Posts had great interest in this new postal service and in February 2002 announced the 2nd. public tender ; similar than previous one, it include also 2 lots of automatic vending machine ATMs. And for second time, no winner again.

At the end of September of 2002 Correos y Telegrafos announced the third public tender with identical bases to this one of February.
In this case, three companies presented their prototypes, all them developed especially for the Spain tender : the French Amiel Electronix, the Portuguese NewVision and the Spanish Epelsa.

After a large test and study of characteristics, in January 2003 the winner for the 2 lots was the Spanish company.

The new EPELSA ATM vending machines

 

The first group of the public tender included the purchase and installation of 200 automatic vending machines of ATMs or variable value stamps.  This new distributors will be equipped with an ATM printer of thermal type that will use the same rolls of sticky supports used now in all the franking balances.  It will be available to obtain ATMs with different programmed values according the postage rates and the payment will be with coins. This vending machines will not issue any receipt. The ATMs will have the same format than current ones, although the printing type is still unknown. The installation of these new distributors will begin possibly from June 2003 and it would take place in the post offices from the most tourist cities.

The second group considered the purchase and installation of 50 modular equipment, including an ATM vending machine (of identical characteristics to those of the first group, but in this case the payment will be also available in banknotes and the vending machine will issue a purchase receipt), a covers distributor unit, a electronic scale and a mailbox.  This equipment would be installed in the main post offices from province capitals. In the images we can see the prototypes presented by the winner company, although the definitive version for the colours, logotypes and quality of materials will be decided by the Department of Image of Spanish Post.

The new vending machines will have a LCD screen and the user can select its language.
  The Grupo Epelsa S.L. is a multinational corporation founded in Spain and manufactures and distributes electronic scales. Their products are targeted to specific markets including the postal and franking scales.
 

The AMIEL ELECTRONIX proposal

 

The French company already had presented its equipment in the first tender of CORREOS in 2001, and since then it was working in the development of automatic vending machines specially adapted to the requirements and specifications established in the bases. The result is the equipment presented to the last tender: SIMA 6002, developed from system SIMA 6000.  These distributors are composed by a payment unit, a panel for interface with the user, formed by a monochrome display LCD and lateral buttons with fixed function, and a receiver for the collection of the stamps or ATMs, the receipt and the coins return.

System SIMA 6000 has a modular design that allows to join the vending machine to an electronic scale and a different sizes covers distributor, as well as stamps and prefranked covers if it is required. The electronic scale send the weight to the main unit, and the screen show the necessary franking according to the destination, type of shipment, tariffs ...  The mailbox can be installed in the scale unit or in the support of the system, as it is in the image.

The French society Amiel Electronix® was founded in 1958 and specializes in custom-designed vending systems. At the present time (February 2003), they have automatic ATM vending machines installed in many countries all around the world : Czech Republic, Cyprus, Tunis, Portugal, New Caledonia, UAE, ...

The NEWVISION proposal

 

The Portuguese company Newvision presented to the tender a system based on the model EPOST that at the moment already is in service in post offices of Portugal and Norway. This is a modular system made up of a basic unit of stamps vending machine that can be complemented with a cover vending unit and an electronic scale with a small mailbox.  The payment is possible by coins, banknotes and credit cards. The distributor gives back the change in coins and, at the request of the user, it prints a receipt of the operation.

The communication with the user is through a monochrome LCD display and a group of buttons with fixed function; eight for product selection and other 4 for language selection of language, scale use, receipt expedition and cancellation of the operation.  All the equipment can be connected through system SIRIG of maintenance of remote equipment.

NewVision is a new Portuguese enterprise with the main goal to provide attendance global systems. At the present time (February 2003), they have automatic ATM vending machines installed in Portugal and Norway.