Scottish Highlands delivery, the islands and Northern Ireland: what your postcode means

Scottish Highlands delivery on a mainland postcode costs the usual UK mainland rate plus £10, charged once per order, and you pay online like anyone else. Northern Ireland and the island areas work differently: we price the delivery for you before you order. Your basket works out which one applies the moment you enter a postcode, and we only deliver to UK addresses.

Three kinds of postcode, three outcomes #

Where the parcel is going	What happens at checkout
Anywhere else on the UK mainland	£7.95 per order, free once goods reach £100 after discount codes
A mainland Highland postcode	Pay online as normal, with £10 added once per order
Northern Ireland, a Scottish island, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the Isles of Scilly or the Isle of Wight	Checkout is blocked and you ask for a delivery quote instead
Outside the UK	Not delivered; the basket tells you so

How Scottish Highlands delivery is charged #

The surcharge is a flat £10 for the whole order. Ten items or one, it’s the same £10. Hitting the free-delivery threshold doesn’t remove it, since the free offer only ever wipes out the standard mainland rate. Artwork and design fees don’t count towards the £100 threshold.

Worked examples

• A small order to Fort William. Say a box of business cards worth under £100. You pay £7.95 plus £10.
• A bigger order to Inverness. Goods of £100 or more after any discount code. The £7.95 is waived, so delivery is just the £10.
• A long banner to Thurso. Anything longer than 3 m, or a board that won’t fit inside A0, brings the one-off £15 oversize fee into play too, sitting beside the £10.

In the basket it all shows on one line, labelled “Scottish Highlands delivery”, so the total is clear before you pay.

Which postcodes count as mainland Highlands #

The basket looks at the part of your postcode before the space. This table is a guide to the mainland codes that pick up Scottish Highlands delivery, not a complete list.

Codes	Roughly covers
IV1 up to IV40 (and a few more IV codes)	The Inverness area, round the Moray Firth, much of the mainland north-west
KW1 up to KW14	Caithness, Sutherland, the towns of Wick and Thurso
PH4 up to PH41, PH49, PH50	Fort William, Lochaber, the Highland end of Perthshire
PA21 up to PA40	Oban and a big slice of mainland Argyll
FK17 up to FK21, G83, some AB codes	Parts of upper Deeside, Speyside and nearby

So a parcel to Oban, Wick, Fort William or Inverness is a mainland Highland order you can pay for online. Can’t recall the full code? Look it up with the Royal Mail postcode finder.

The quoted areas #

Courier costs to these places vary so much from one parcel to the next that a single online price would be wrong more often than right. So a person works out the price for your actual order:

Area	Postcodes include
Northern Ireland	BT
Western Isles	HS
Orkney	KW15, KW16, KW17
Shetland	ZE
Skye, the Small Isles, Mull, Arran, Bute	Recognised by the basket from your postcode
Isle of Man	IM
Guernsey and Jersey (Channel Islands)	GY, JE
Isles of Scilly and Isle of Wight	Quoted too

Islands inside Highland postcode areas

Island codes win. The basket looks for them before it looks for Highland ones, which matters in the IV and PH areas where a few codes cover islands. An island address there goes down the quote route, while its mainland neighbour just pays the £10.

What you’ll see in the basket for a quoted postcode #

Enter one of those postcodes and a message appears at once explaining that this area is priced by quote. Checkout is switched off for it, and in place of the usual button you get one labelled Get a delivery quote. That way nobody pays the mainland price for an island parcel by mistake.

Tap it and the quote form opens pre-filled with what’s in your basket: each product and the options you picked, the postcode and the goods total. Add your name and details, choose a reply by email or by phone, and send. Someone works out the carriage for that exact order and gets back to you with a total.

Getting a delivery quote, start to finish #

1. Fill your basket. Choose each product’s size, extras and speed, and get your artwork sorted, exactly as a mainland customer would.
2. Put in the postcode. You’ll see straight away whether it’s the £10 Highland rate online or a quote.
3. Send the request. Press the quote button in the basket, or use the quote form directly.
4. Mention your deadline. Parcels to Northern Ireland and the islands can spend longer in transit. Tell us the date you need it and we’ll point you to a turnaround that works; the turnaround guide lays out the choices.
5. Say yes to the quote. Once you accept, the order goes through with carriage included.

Big, heavy or awkward items #

Bulky items are dearer to shift wherever they go, and remote addresses add to that. Flag any oversize banner or board clearly when you ask for a price. On mainland Highland postcodes the £15 oversize charge simply sits beside the £10; large banner delivery lists which sizes trigger it.

Sometimes the tidy answer is to come in below the limit. Our 3 m by 1 m banner, 9 ft 10 in × 3 ft 3 in (3000 × 1000 mm), avoids the oversize charge, where a 10 ft × 3 ft (3048 × 914 mm) banner doesn’t.

Weight matters in a quote as much as size. Stationery, labels and small PVC banners pack into neat parcels; a roller banner is a long, boxed item; 8 ft × 4 ft (2440 × 1220 mm) hoarding boards are big and heavy. Give full sizes and quantities and the price will match the real parcel.

Ordering from abroad for a UK address #

Every delivery address has to be in the UK, and the basket says so if you try one that isn’t. If you’re overseas but the print is for a UK venue, site or colleague, that’s no problem: put the UK delivery address in at checkout.

The short version #

It all comes down to the postcode. A mainland Highland code means Scottish Highlands delivery at the usual rate plus £10, once, paid online. An island or BT postcode means a quick quote first. Everything else is on the delivery page.