Ireland’s biggest independent parcels operator Nightline today unveiled an international mailpartnership with Swiss Post that it claims will offer “faster, better, and cheaper” services than
any currently available to Irish businesses.The partnership brings Swiss Post into the Irish market for the first time, and providesNightline and its mail and small-parcel customers with access to the Swiss postal operator’sinternational network. From today, Nightline will begin consolidating international mail andsmall-parcel volumes at its Dublin hub, and using commercial air capacity to fly this to Heathrow,and transfer it to Swiss Post’s Hounslow facility, for distribution by air or road within the SwissPost network in Europe, the US and Asia.
Nightline CEO John Tuohy told CEP-Research: “The parcels network that we have already gives usunrivalled reach into the Irish market, and the close proximity of our Dublin hub allows us totransfer into the Swiss Post network very easily. And it will be cheaper, partly because we haveagreed some very competitive pricing with Swiss Post.”
He said Nightline currently had around a 40% share of Ireland’s domestic parcels market, andaround 25% of its parcels market overall, including international. Its mail business has remainedrelatively small, limited by the monopoly An Post still has on domestic mail under 50 grammes.However, Tuohy expects the partnership with Swiss Post to provide a major boost to Nightline’sinternational mail ambitions, and with the full liberalisation of the Irish postal market thisyear, it will look at expanding in other parts of the market, including an expected “downstreamaccess” agreement (DSA) with the state postal service.
In December, Nightline set up a specialist mail division, Eirpost, to manage its planned newpostal services for Irish businesses, in response to the liberalisation, and Eirpost will handlethe ongoing operations with Swiss Post under the new partnership.
The two parties declined to discuss volume targets, but Tuohy said that Ireland remained anexport-focused economy that generated large volumes of international mail, in part because of thepresence of multinational companies in Ireland. “Around 30% of all mail in Ireland isinternational,” Tuohy told CEP-Research. “We will be faster, better and cheaper than the otherproviders – not just the incumbent, but also private providers like DHL and TNT, and that is acompelling combination.”
Swiss Post International UK CEO Paul Taylor told CEP-Research that company had chosen to partnerwith Nightline because of its comprehensive network in Ireland. “The collection network is one ofthe most important elements to offering a mail service, and Nightline has got its vehicles outthere already, collecting on a daily basis,” he said.
Taylor said the three-year partnership would initially focus on outbound international mail fromIreland, although the two would look at opportunities to partner in other areas in the future – forexample for inbound international, once the new DSAs had been negotiated.
He said Swiss Post had a similar partnership with operators in the UK, and had used a partneragent in Spain on a similar basis for three or four years, although Swiss Post had eventuallyacquired that partner. Taylor said Swiss Post was looking at setting up similar agreements in otherEuropean countries, although he was not able to give details.
Tuohy said the new partnership constituted “a radical difference to what has previously beenavailable”, with services tailored to customers’ needs. “This is a huge fillip for Nightline andour attempts to provide customers with an innovative and flexible system capable of supporting theway they need to do business.”
