Irish parcels carrier Nightline is to spend €900,000 on its IT infrastructure to further improveits ability to handle growing parcel volumes.
Nightline CEO John Tuohy said the funds will be spend on state-of-the-art mobile terminals forits drivers and warehousing staff and the installation of a more comprehensive wireless networkacross all of Nightline’s depots.
The new investment follows a separate €200,000 outlay on hardware in the end of last yearbringing the total sum spent on Nightline’s technological improvements to more than €1 million inless than 12 months.
Tuohy said both projects are the result of the growing volumes from home deliveries generated byNightline’s contracts with leading e-commerce brands.
The €900,000 investment is part of Nightline’s latest deal with Zetes, Europe’s leading systemintegrator of mobility and data capture solutions, to equip all of Nightline’s drivers and many ofits warehouse staff with Motorola MC9500 handheld devices. The terminals will enable the drivers tohandle both stock control and deliveries on behalf of clients even quicker than before.
Together with a more robust wireless system, the new equipment will ensure better datatransmission between employees on the road and Nightline’s seven facilities, five of which wereexpanded last year, located in Dublin, Belfast, Sligo, Cork and Limerick.
“Given the sort of volumes which we’re looking at, there is a necessity to make sure that bothour drivers and those individuals processing parcels at our network of depots right across Irelandare able to do their jobs as efficiently as they can to deliver the service clients and theircustomers deserve,” Tuohy explained.
“When we started business in 1992, we were handling 1,000 transactions each week. Now, weprocess around 130,000 transactions per day so capable IT is a must,” he added.
Zetes Ireland employs 24 people and is expanding the local team with offices in Dublin andLimerick. The Zetes Group is headquartered in Belgium and employs more than 1,100 people across 15countries within Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
At the beginning of this month, Nightline announced that it will establish a network ofself-service parcel terminals across the country this year in cooperation with Poland’sfast-growing Polish private postal group InPost to make online shopping cheaper and more convenientfor consumers and retailers. The ‘easyPack’ self-service parcel terminals will be installed byInPost through its parent company Integer and will start operating in June under the new brandParcel Motel.
