Freight forward experts

Coming up on a fifth decade in business, Irish Express Cargo has grown from being a small haulage outfit to Ireland’s oldest freight forwarder. Frances Murphy is the company’s Freight Manager at their Cork base and told Irish Trucker all about what they have to offer and their plans for the future.

John Kelly loads one of the companyÕs trucks

For the best part of 40 years now, Irish Express Cargo (IEC) has been steadily growing to become Ireland’s largest and oldest freight forwarding and logistics solutions providers. In the late 1990s, in particular, the company experienced tremendous expansion to bring it where it is today.

IEC was established as a general freight forwarder back in 1972, which grew into a service provider that would cover Air Freight, UK/Ireland Express Distribution, European Overland Distribution, Ocean Freight, as well as specialised distribution services and customs brokerage. Through such services IEC established a worldwide network of partners to handle complete door-to-door movement of air and sea shipments.

In the 1990’s, IEC rapidly expanded into specialist warehousing services, providing technology driven logistics solutions to major corporations. This led to the establishment of super-hubs at Limerick, Glasgow, Lutterworth, Venray Holland, Nashville, USA, Memphis, USA, Mexico and Singapore.

Some of the Cork staff at IEC. John Kelly, Frances Murphy, Philip Currivan, Martha OÕShea and Leo Sena

In September 2000, IEC was acquired by Flextronics International Limited, a company with $30BN combined annual revenue, 200,000 employees in over 30 countries.
Flextronics designs, builds and ships complete packaged products for its OEM customers and provides after-market and field services to support customer end-to-end supply chain requirements. Logistics Systems provided by IEC are now in use by Flextronics at warehouses all over the world.

IEC and Flextronics have a combined spend in excess of $615M in freight forwarding annually. This spend allows them to offer customers significant freight cost reductions through tightly negotiated global contracts.
“The company started in Dublin in the early 70’s, opening branches in Cork and Limerick soon after, offering services outside of what was previously available. IEC Cork pioneered the first Vendor Managed Hub in Europe in 1989, offering overseas customers local facilities, and providing duty and vat deferment for local companies through our fully bonded warehouses. Today our warehouses are operated to the highest standards of best practice, and are now also GDP and FDA approved,” explained Freight Manager, Frances Murphy.

Liz Dillon works in HR with Irish Express Cargo

“We work closely with our client base to achieve an intelligent and cost effective supply chain. Our company is committed to Lean Six Sigma. Through this we continuously strive to improve in the areas of Customer Service, Cycle Time, Cost and Quality. We consistently set ourselves new goals in business excellence and were delighted to be recently accredited with being the first company to achieve Authorised Economic Operator status in Ireland. We are ISO 9001:2008 accredited and are also the first Irish company to apply for ISO 28000 Supply Chain Security Certification.
“Our Super-hubs provide world-class logistics services to the Electronics, Pharmaceutical, Retail, Media/Music, Automotive, Agricultural, and Beverages industries,” she added.”

Irish Express Cargo Limited is one of the leading third party logistics providers in Ireland, operating six logistics centers in Ireland, with four in Cork, two in Limerick, two sites in the UK at Linwood and Swindon, Lodz in Poland and the latest addition Pardubice, Czech Republic.

Business Development Manager Siobhan Coote

Tom Clancy is the company’s General Manager for Ireland; while Frances Murphy, Dangerous Goods Specialist Associate, is IEC’s Freight Manager in Cork and has been with the company for over 15 years now.
“We are based in Killbarry Industrial Estate in Cork and there are approx 400 full-time staff employed at this facility, with approx 30 dedicated freight and warehouse staff,” she explained.

IEC offers clients a comprehensive range of Air, Road and Sea Freight forwarding services, with the capability of providing door-to-door services, at competitive rates. With local expertise at origin and destination points around the Globe, IEC is capable of providing their customers with the best solution for their shipments.

As well as being a member of the Department of Transport security program, and a leading IATA agent in Ireland since 1980, IEC also maintains offices in close proximity to Irish and UK Airports and Ports and on-line connection with over 60 major airlines and integrators.
IEC can also provide temperature controlled vehicles to service worldwide movements for the pharmaceutical industry.
“Our brokerage personnel look after all customs clearance requirements, liaising with Customs and Excise on behalf of our customers, ensuring all legal requirements are met and ensuring smooth clearance, and final delivery to the customer,” states the company’s website.
“To maintain our position as ‘a best in class provider’, we continually examine our costs and services thus ensuring superior customer focus and competitive advantage.

“Our aim is to deliver the right goods, in the right time, in the right quantity, in the right condition, at the right cost.”
In the last number of years the trend towards outsourcing has continued to grow around the world. Traditional transportation, warehousing and transhipment have been increasingly subcontracted to specialised forwarding companies that assume the responsibility for transporting the goods and managing the warehouses.

IEC can also offer their customers a first class packaging, and de-trashing service. They can label, palletize, band, and shrink-wrap any freight if required. The company’s packaging department also carries a range of filling material, heavy duty cardboard cartons and specialist shipping labels.
Third Party Logistics (3PL), or Managed Warehousing as it is also known, is the function which the owner of goods outsources various elements of the supply chain to a 3PL company that can perform the management function of the clients inbound freight, customs, warehousing, order fulfilment, distribution and outbound freight to the clients customers.

It is well-known in this line of business that any company which refuses to consider outsourcing is at risk of losing its competitive advantage or the opportunity to create a competitive advantage offered by 3PL providers.
Frances Murphy knows these facts as well as any and she is confident that as long as Irish Express Cargo can keep doing what they are doing at present, they will come out of one of the toughest times for Irish businesses in living memory and further prosper when the upward turn arrives.
‘Like everyone else, we are finding the marketplace extremely competitive, but we are confident that we can maintain our share, while offering best in class service and good value,” she concluded.