Staff at Mailboxes Unlimited are enjoying sunshine for the first time in 30 years while they work.

The courier company has moved from a basement on Par-la-Ville Road to the ground floor of Butterfield Bank’s Rosebank Centre on nearby Bermudiana Road.

Kenny Thomson, the president of Mailboxes, said: “We have windows so we can see the sunlight while we are working. From our team’s perspective the new space is like night and day.”

The company made the move over the weekend.

Mr Thomson said: “Friday night we closed the door and started unplugging everything. It was quite a difficult weekend.”

But he added the company was up and running again in time for Monday morning.

Mr Thomson said the new office was 50 per cent bigger.

He added: “The post boxes used to take up the majority of our footprint. Now it only takes up 15 to 20 per cent of the area. The bulk of the area is now taken up by our inbound forwarding service.”

Mailboxes’ new landlord has provided three parking spaces in the Butterfield Bank car park, which is undergoing work, so the spaces are not ready for use yet.

Customers can now access their mailboxes 24 hours a day, with electronic access that could not be offered in the past.

Mr Thomson said the new office would also be more accessible to the disabled and people who could not manage stairs.

He said the company had talked about moving for some time and the Covid-19 crisis underlined the need for more space. Mr Thomson added that the company had been busy bringing otherwise unavailable goods to the island, including medical supplies, since the Covid-19 crisis began.

He said he felt a responsibility to assist people over the pandemic. Mr Thomson highlighted a mother who had to rush in an insulin inhaler for her diabetic son over the lockdown.

He added that a lot of people would travel over the summer months and shop abroad in normal times.

Mr Thomson said: “They won’t be doing that this year, so we can ship all these things from the United States to Bermuda.”

He added the extra workload meant he had been able to hire additional staff. The company now has 11 full-time staff, seven new student staff roles and three new evening positions, all filled by Bermudians.

One of his team, D’Angelo “Beanz” Clarke is the star of Mailboxes’ new advertisement, made by Uber Super Duper, which was designed to promote the firm’s new location.

The architect OBMI Bermuda handled the refurbishment of the office, which was a Butterfield branch until it closed in September.

Mr Thomson said: “OBMI really pulled together my vision for a modern, customer-friendly space. It’s also great for my hard-working team and everyone is looking forward to coming to work in this new, bright office.”

Mr Thomson took over Mailboxes from his father, Steve, in 2018.

He said when his father first opened Mailboxes on Par-la-Ville Road in 1990, space in Hamilton was at a premium.

Mr Thomson added: “At the time, Mailboxes was not the only tenant.; there was a business to the right and to the left.”

But the other businesses moved out over time and Mailboxes expanded to take over the whole area. Mr Thomson said his father was sentimental about the Par-la-Ville basement, but that he did not share his nostalgia. He added: “It was time to move onward and upward.”

• Mailboxes has lowered the price of annual membership to $10 for those who join before the end of July as a special offer. For more information, see Mailboxes.bm