Irish parcels carrier Nightline reported that a surge in Irish online shopping from UK retailershas resulted in a successful first year for the company’s ‘virtual address’ facility established in
Belfast.Nightline stated that more than half of the purchases from British e-retailers it delivers arenow routed via its depot in Northern Ireland. It was launched last year to support Nightline’snationwide network of Parcel Motel terminals and to avoid the high costs of direct delivery toIreland for Irish consumers.
To profit from the service, Irish online shoppers need to indicate Nightline’s Belfast depot astheir delivery address so the products will then be shipped to their local Parcel Motel terminalfor free.
Nightline Group CEO John Tuohy said that there had also been a “staggering” increase in thenumber of individuals signing up to Parcel Motel to prepare for the pre-Christmas shopping season. “ We are looking at several hundred new subscribers every single day for a system which has grownalmost by word of mouth among Irish consumers looking for convenience, speed and economy in the waythey get delivery of goods bought online.”
“Somewhere in the region of 100,000 parcels a day are shipped from the UK to Ireland, of which agrowing proportion are accounted for by e-commerce sales. The ‘virtual address’ now processes anever more significant proportion of those items,” he added.
Previously, the only option for Irish online shoppers ordering from the UK was to pay carriagerates which were not only far higher than those within Ireland but in some cases even moreexpensive than the costs of shipping to continental Europe, Tuohy explained.
He added that the success of the ‘virtual address’ justifies the company’s decision to treblethe size of its Belfast premises in the months before the launch of Parcel Motel in July last year.The terminals are already present in every one of the 26 counties in the Irish Republic. By the endof next year, Nightline expects 400 terminals to be operating nationwide.
The Irish e-commerce growth is reflected in the recent figures by Ecommerce Europe showing thatIrish online shoppers have increased their spending by 25% in one year and doubled it since 2009.However the number of online orders placed with the overseas retailers also increased 6% in 2012,compared to 2011, due to Ireland’s close ties to the UK.
Founded in 1992, the Nightline Group has grown its network to 10 TAPA ‘A’-certified depotsacross Ireland in addition to facilities in the UK and Europe. The company claimed it moves morethan one-in-four of all items transported on Irish roads, following heavy restructuring thissummer. It now comprises five divisions including Nightline Delivers, Parcel Motel, NightlineInternational, Nightline Logistics and its business post subsidiary Eirpost.
