Logistics and delivery company Nightline has announced 150 new jobs on the back of continued growth in e-commerce. A combination of Parcel Motel, Eircode and evolving demographics are behind the changing landscape, according to the company.
An investment of €3m announced today (15 September) by Nightline will see the company ultimately reach 1,000 employees in Ireland, with CEO John Tuohy confident of continued expansion in the future.
The roles announced are in the frontline space – drivers, warehouse workers, sorting staff etc – though, with an in-house software and technology department and a busy quarter ahead, Tuohy’s confidence in further growth is clear.
“E-commerce is a rapidly growing area,” he said, noting Q4 2016 is expected to see a 25pc increase on 2015.
“More and more people are happy shopping online,” he said. “As demographics change, people who have been using the internet for a couple of decades are now settling down, buying houses and, with a bit of disposable income, are comfortable shopping online.”
North and south
Nightline may not be a well-known name but one of its services, Parcel Motel, certainly is. Set up in 2012 as the country’s first virtual address space business, its timing was perfect.
Irish residents could purchase goods online that did not deliver to their home country, instead renting a box in Northern Ireland paired with one near their home, with Parcel Motel collecting and delivering each package over the border.
“People like it because you can collect your delivery 24/7,” said Tuohy, who claims that with every new competitor coming along looking for a slice of Parcel Motel’s pie, his company actually benefits from an increase in interest. “Every new competitor gets compared to us so, yeah, we see a spike.”
Eircode, the digital address system brought in by the Irish Government earlier this year has – despite a feeling of disdain among certain sections of the general public – seen Nightline’s overall operations improve and expand significantly.
Saying it’s “really valuable” to his company, Tuohy explained that this “proper, structured addressing system” is something the country lacked, badly.
“The phenomenon of postal addresses that say, perhaps, Tipperary but are actually in Waterford is gone. If customers can provide their Eircode, we can get the physical coordinates,” said Tuohy.
“Building it into Google Maps is revolutionary. Our driver calls the recipient, gets the Eircode, puts it into Google Maps and gets step-by-step directions.”
With a newly installed CIO, and expanded in-house app development team, the jobs in this current announcement will be across the whole island of Ireland, with a few in mainland Britain, too.
Nightline CEO John Tuohy with Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell O’Connor, TD, and Mark Baker, premium fleet driver. Image: Naoise Culhane
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