New Zealand Post says staff worked through Thursday night to ensure thousands of letters and parcels were delivered on time despite a fire at Auckland's main mail processing centre.
The building had to be shut down due to toxic fumes caused by an electrical fire in the main switchboard on Thursday morning. No mail was damaged.
Machines that sort mail at a rate of about 35,000 letters an hour were stopped for most of the day and staff had to process mail by hand instead.
New Zealand Post processing general manager John Andrews says staff processed close to 1.6 million items overnight, both by hand and machine.
Mr Andrews said on Friday morning that most of the backlog had been cleared. There would be no delays with parcels and only 1% of letters would be delayed - about 15,000 items.
On Thursday, the company had estimated 10% of items might arrive late.
