A YORK businessman was shocked to receive a parcel in the post he had sent out to a customer five years ago.

John Bremner, of Sweet Cures in York, sent the package, containing a natural health treatment, to a customer in the Caribbean, on April 22, 2006.

John said: “I sent it Royal Mail special delivery and heard nothing until the customer said she hadn’t received it.

“I sent out a replacement a long time ago and never wondered where the first package had gone.”

John said the product inside the returned parcel was now well out of date.

According to the Royal Mail’s Track & Trace website, the parcel was registered as sent on April 22 in 2006, and is still being processed in Netherlands Antilles, off the coast of Venezuela.

Since the first package was sent out, John’s business has grown significantly.

He said: “We’ve even changed address, from my home in Foxwood Lane to a unit in the Pyramid Court industrial estate in Boroughbridge Road.

“Since this package was sent, we’ve built the base from nothing, a one-man operation, to a £1 million turnover with eight members of staff.”

A spokesman for Royal Mail said: “We apologise that the customer did not receive the usual high level of service which he expects from Royal Mail.

“Royal Mail handles 68 million items a day and cases such as this are very unusual.

“Without seeing the item it is very difficult to speculate on what may have happened to it.”