Interlink to sell French menu

Having spent the past 15 years building up its franchise presence in Ireland, Interlink now has the network of customers to sell from the wider menu of services available through parent company, La Poste.
With 31 franchisees in Eire, company COO, Connor O’Neill says: “We are practically franchised up!” However since January, three new operations have started in N. Ireland taking the total there to four, and O’Neill sees that market is a key area for growth in the coming yea he expects to see last year’s revenue for Ireland grow from 18-19 million euros to 22 million euros.
Focused on the high end of the market, Interlink changes a premium for the personal touch its franchise operators are able to offer customers, O’Neill says. The bulk of sales and all deliveries are conducted locally. With corporate sales passed down to the relevant franchisees, and overall revenue paid out locally in commission. However for all its strength domestically, interlink only takes 8% of its turnover from cross-boarder traffic (UK). This looks set to change. In April La Poste-controlled DPD launched a road-based service connecting to Europe. While solid figures had not been fully collated by the time EL went to press, O’Neill says it has started very well, and he has targeted revenue of 1.5 million euros, or 250-300 consignments a night by year end. In addition, Interlink is to add the services of chronopost, and international air mail service, also owned by the French Post office. Interlink currently uses third party operators for the service. A final string to the operations bow, has been its inbound logistics operations. Launched 18 months ago O’Neill says it has seen fast growth, and is expected to draw in 1.3 million euros in revenue this year.
“The Irish market has been going through a difficult patch, with the parcels business quiet for the past nine months. Its still been growing but it has grown sluggishly. However, last month was much better and we feel we are pulling out now,” he adds.