For any graph $G=(V,E)$ with maximum degree $Δ$ and without isolated edges, and a positive integer $r$, by $χ'_{Σ,r}(G)$ we denote the $r$-distant sum distinguishing index of $G$. This is the least integer $k$ for which a proper edge colouring $c:E\to\{1,2,\ldots,k\}$ exists such that $\sum_{e\ni u}c(e)\neq \sum_{e\ni v}c(e)$ for every pair of distinct vertices $u,v$ at distance at most $r$ in $G$. It was conjectured that $χ'_{Σ,r}(G)\leq (1+o(1))Δ^{r-1}$ for every $r\geq 3$. Thus far it has been in particular proved that $χ'_{Σ,r}(G)\leq 6Δ^{r-1}$ if $r\geq 4$. Combining probabilistic and constructive approach, we show that this can be improved to $χ'_{Σ,r}(G)\leq (4+o(1))Δ^{r-1}$ if the minimum degree of $G$ equals at least $\ln^8Δ$.