The job losses at the Nuvion Group, which includes courier firm Fastway, Parcel Connect and Nügo, are set to be felt across the country, according to Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA).
It says some of its members are owed more than €100,000 by the company, which entered receivership late on Tuesday.
An online meeting called by the receivers, Mark Degnan and Brendan O’Reilly of Interpath, for the company’s 300 directly employed staff was held on Wednesday. Many had only heard their jobs were at stake when they were told to stop work on Tuesday afternoon.
There is said to have been a good deal of anger expressed at the meeting over the sudden nature of the news at a firm which also provides work to up to 700 additional people, mainly drivers, on a contract basis.
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The receivers are understood to have been “managing expectations” in relation to jobs, with little prospect, it seems, that the firm will be bought as a going concern.
Some progress is said to have been made on the delivery of some 50,000 packages currently in the possession of the firm by other contractors.
The group’s clients included a number of well-known fashion brands, including Very, Missguided, Boohoo, PrettyLittleThing and Zalando, and it seems inevitable a significant number of deliveries will be impacted.
The difficulties at the business are said to have been contributed to by the loss to An Post of contracts with Asos and Sports Direct.
The sector is highly competitive but An Post is reported to have improved its offering significantly over the past year or two while Amazon has expanded its direct delivery operation in Ireland.
IRHA president Ger Hyland said he was aware of contractors on the ground who are owed substantial sums and would now be under severe pressure due to leases on vans and other expenses, including mortgages, just weeks before Christmas.
He said a number of the hauliers who transported bulk shipments to the company’s network of depots are owed in excess of €100,000 and believe they have little prospect of recovering their money.
“This is terrible news for Fastway staff but it goes far beyond that too. Thousands of people across Ireland are going to be impacted by this, from the suppliers and retailers who were doing business to the individual contractors,” he said.
He said the wider haulage sector was in crisis due to rising costs and that other companies are struggling. He said the announcement of increases to toll charges coming on the day people were getting to grips with the Fastway news was “tone deaf”.
Seán McDonagh, of the Communications Workers’ Union, which represents workers in the sector, said the company’s staff were paying the price for “a business model that relied on low pay and poor conditions but which ultimately couldn’t deliver”.
In a statement, Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary said department staff were working to make affected workers aware of the supports available to them.
