ISSUE 1 2010
IRELANd
How TPN survived – and grew
At the bottom of the recession, in the first quarter of 2009, throughput at The Pallet Network had fallen to 4,500 pallets per week from 7,500 a few months earlier. MD Seamus McGowan was not sure if TPN could survive. “Money was flying out of
the door. There seemed no end to it.” Like all companies across Ireland, TPN scrutinised every cost line. It reduced its head count by 10 to 45, and remaining staff took a pay cut. Phone and insurance charges were reviewed and suppliers were beaten down on price. “You never
know until a recession how lean you can get,” McGowan says. TPN even installed a system to use damaged or broken pallets as heating fuel at its hub in Blanchardstown, north Dublin. Cost-cutting was matched by service enhancements. “We’ve had to introduce half-pallets, quarter-pallets, even a single parcel rate. We now have a dedicated parcel cage on each vehicle, though we don’t do home delivery. Ireland has never been big enough for pallets only,” McGowan says. Volumes have now
returned to their mid-2008 level and could double — to numbers McGowan believes is the maximum Ireland can support — at the current facility. Prices, however, are 12-15% down. “We can take on the chin
the discounts being offered elsewhere, though it’s a tragedy given our quality of service,” he says. “No-one will have the nerve to put their prices up before mid- 2011, even by €1 per cent. It’s incredible the value people are getting.” Despite the discounting,
TPN is set for its most profitable year. Its 23 members
in Ireland, including three in the North, are fully integrated with The Pallet Network in the UK. A structure of one member per county along Ireland’s western seaboard is unusual. “The guy in Kerry gets input from 117 UK and Irish depots,” McGowan says. Only one member
“Money was flying out of the door. There seemed no end to it”
- Seamus McGowan
collapsed during the crisis, and a “queue of hauliers” are waiting to join TPN, he adds. There is room for two or three as territories are further subdivided. “ F o r example, Cappoquin asked to lose west Cork. It just wanted to focus on the city and the
eastern half of the county. They didn’t want to go to Limerick or the far corner of Kerry and come back empty,” McGowan says. Big-league forwarders
such as Schenker are now using TPN, and since April P&O Ferrymasters has been using the network to distribute less-than- containerload consignments from Germany and Benelux to end customers throughout Ireland. TPN is also moving back
into logistics, a business McGowan says it started to build up some years ago but passed on to ABX, believing it was not compatible with overnight pallet delivery. ABX was subsequently bought out by DSV. With Mothercare and manufacturer
barbecue
Weber among its clients, TPN is now taking back space at a former pallet hub, which had been partly subcontracted, in order to service its logistics accounts. The company transfers
import containers from Dublin port, strips them and stores products ready for despatch when required through the network.
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