As Irish shoppers continue to migrate online - two investments this morning reflect moves to improve our infrastructure to get packages to shoppers.

Mountpark Logistics has been granted permission to build a €40m logistics and industrial hub in Baldonnel, south county Dublin.

Work on the state-of-the-art development will create roughly 120 jobs, with construction set to start this summer.

As many as 850 jobs are expected to be created by the companies operating in the hub once it opens, while a further 15 additional ancillary service jobs are also likely to be required.

Delivery

The Irish franchise of Fastway, which was originally operated in Australia and New Zealand, has received a major investment.

The Irish Times reports this morning that a specialist investment fund, MML Growth Fund has now taken a minority shareholding in Fastway in a deal valued at up to €12m.

MML is particularly focussed on high-growth small and medium-sized businesses and is backed by Enterprise Ireland, AIB and the European Investment Bank, amongst others

Its Irish franchise, under chief executive and shareholder, Bobby O’ Keeffe has built up to about 300 drivers around the country – who are self-employed but supplied with centralised support by Fastway.

Fastway is also the owner of Parcel Connect, a business which allows customers to collect online deliveries at designated pick-up points such as petrol forecourts.

Yesterday it was announced that  Deadline couriers' MyReturns.ie - a service which picks up items to be returned to online retailers - is now operating across Dublin and has plans to go national during the next six months.

 

Additional reporting by Craig Fitzpatrick