The CEDEX System and its Features

As the postal mail system was invented and more and more people began using it to communicate with their loved ones abroad, post offices worldwide were forced to come up with newer methods to help them deal with the growing number of packages they receive everyday. And so the postal code was devised by the Germans. But, somehow, the French weren't satisfied, and so they strove to create a more efficient system to work in conjunction with the German's. And what the French was able to come up with was what we call nowadays as the CEDEX system.

The CEDEX system, or the Courrier d'Entreprise a Distribution Exceptionnelle system, is a mail sorting system originally discovered and used in France. It was designed to quickly identify the recipients of large volumes of packages and/or mail, so that packages intended for these destinations are easily sorted out from the rest of the still unidentified packages. While this technique was for a time restricted in use only within France, other countries quickly followed suit after they had discovered the efficiency of the method. Today, a handful of countries still utilize this system or a modified version of the CEDEX system.

Let's give an example: (Note that the following address is not a real address)

16 grand rue

23481 Lepaud Cedex 05

This is how an address using the CEDEX system would look like. The address and postal code is given along with the CEDEX value of “05”, which denotes the Ve arrondissement. This Ve arrondissement value is assigned by the local post office to an area that sends or receives large bulks of mail on a regular basis like, for example, government agencies or businesses. Without the CEDEX value, the normal address on the mail would look somewhat like this:

16 grand rue

23005 Lepaud