Minister opens €40m Athlone Mail Centre
17 January 2003
The custom-built 70,000 square foot plant is equipped with Europe’s most modern mail processing equipment. It currently employs 130 staff and will soon be handling 350,000 letters a day.
The opening of the Athlone Mail Centre marks the end of phase three of a national mails processing automation programme. The €100 million project will be completed later this year with the opening of a fourth automated centre at Little Island in Cork.
Major expansion and installation of modern equipment has already taken place at the Dublin Mail Centre and at Portlaoise Mail Centre. Completion of the Cork plant will raise An Post’s capacity for automated mail processing to 85 per cent.
It will also enable An Post to increase its quality of service – as measured by its level of next day delivery - to its business and domestic customers countrywide in a liberalised, regulated and competitive market.
Within three months mail to and from Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Donegal, Leitrim, Longford, Cavan, Monaghan and Westmeath will be processed at Athlone which is close to the Athlone by-pass.
Minister Ahern congratulated An Post on its foresight and initiative in developing its automation programme.
“Enormous change, now taking place in the international postal market, would have a significant impact on An Post,” he said.
“The pace of liberalisation is increasing and regulation is already having a growing impact on An Post. It is encouraging to see that An Post is preparing for competition and investing for the future. Competition presents challenges but it also offers opportunities,” Minister Ahern added.
An Post chairman Stephen O’Connor said that they had invested €100 million in the national automation programme. The investment was a demonstration of its ability to face a competitive future with confidence.
“Athlone is a further step on the road to the provision of a high quality postal delivery service to meet modern business demands. We are on our way to completing a fundamental reform of our mails system,” he said.
