Beat A Path To Birmingham With A Brilliant Courier Service

Birmingham earned the title 'the heart of England' thanks to the presence of a large concentration of the industries on which the country's fortunes were founded.

The city vied with Manchester for supremacy during the height of the industrial revolution, as both capitalised on their convenient location for the most efficient transport system of the day the country's canals.

And although many of those industries have waned to a shadow of their former selves, and the canals have been superseded by faster forms of travel such as road, railways and air, Birmingham still occupies a place as one of the foremost commercial centres in the UK.

This is unsurprising given that Birmingham is close to the geographical centre of England, a fact which has meant it was the focus of many of the ambitions of the great industrial and transport pioneers of the country.

And today it makes capital out of the excellent communications network which its location has helped spawn. Many of the heavy industries for which the city became known around the world, such as machine tool manufacture, vehicle construction and the assembly of electrical equipment, have gone into decline as competition has emerged from the Far East. Nevertheless, Birmingham still places great emphasis on its people's ability to make things, albeit now with greater concentration on high tech and high-end products.

Birmingham was also the birthplace of what were later to become two of the UK's largest banks Lloyd's and Midland although both are now part of much bigger groups, the former majority-owned by the British government since the banking crisis of 2009, and the latter part of the Hong Kong-Shanghai Banking Corporation.

Birmingham's higher education sector includes three universities, which have an annual intake of approximately 65,000 students, placing it second behind London in the size of its student population.

Just over a million people live in the Birmingham city area, which in turn is at the heart of the West Midlands region. Incorporating other cities or towns such as Coventry, Lichfield, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Tamworth and Dudley, this 232 square mile area has a population of nearly 2.3million, making it the second largest conurbation in the UK, and demonstrating why it is so well served by both domestic and international couriers and delivery companies.

With its excellent network of main roads and motorways, which enable traffic to get right into the city centre easily, along with good rail and air links, it is clear why, despite the decimation of its traditional industries, Birmingham remains so important to the commercial success of the United Kingdom.