Our main strength is the quality of our people

A leading Irish food transport specialist is celebrating the five-year anniversary of its Scottish operation.

Award-winning food-logistics and transport company, O’Toole Transport, is a family business, established in Galway, Ireland nearly 30 years ago.

But it’s another anniversary that O’Toole is currently celebrating. Back in 2019, O’Toole Transport saw an opportunity for expansion. They had already built a successful company, with many years’ experience of transporting seafood and salmon in Ireland – and knew that the Scottish market was growing.

The decision was made. Five years ago, O’Toole launched its operations in Scotland, with a third depot – in Bellshill, near Glasgow, in addition to its Galway and Dublin hubs.  It has since added another two operating centres: one in Orkney and the other in Warrington.

Control center planning deliveries of Scottish Salmon into Europe

At this time, the UK’s official departure from the European Union, following the Brexit vote, was just around the corner − as was the as-yet unanticipated disruption that Covid would bring. But the business rose to the challenges and O’Toole’s hunch that there would be interest in and demand for the company’s services has been validated.

Reflecting on the early days of the firm’s Scottish operations, Laurence O’Toole says: “When we came to Scotland initially we had no contacts, but we knew that the Scottish seafood exporters wanted a choice. We had built a strong foothold in Ireland for exporting into Europe, and a reputation for excellent customer service.”

And it was now or never, as he adds: “While the timing of our launch might not have been perfect, due to Brexit, we took the view that if we didn’t move in 2019, we would have been sitting on the fence for another few years. That did not seem like the right option.”

Preparation was key, with a strong focus on planning and establishing efficient processes ahead of the new Brexit regulations coming into force in January 2021. This ensured that the business navigated changes effectively.

MD Laurence O’Toole, O’Toole Transport

Five years on from launch, O’Toole Transport now provides temperature-controlled warehousing and cross-dock and transport services, as well as export health-certification and customs services, to support customers seamlessly from one end of the export process to the other.

It offers its Scottish customers a daily service to Boulogne-sur-Mer, which started with four trucks: now there are twenty four. The company now runs fresh and frozen departures from Scotland to Spain, Italy, Holland, Poland, Belgium and all of France. The O’Toole team are connected to the customers’ IT systems and there are scanners in the warehouse to check goods in and out of the warehouse. A typical day in Bellshill involves truck loads of salmon arriving from Orkney and Shetland, with white fish arriving from Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Aberdeen. The goods are checked by the vets on site, trailers sealed and dispatched to Europe in quick order. Staff numbers have increased too. When the Scottish base opened, it had just five full-time staff members: now it has 34, bringing the total number of the company’s employees to around 300.

And there are more to come, as O’Toole explains: “We’re recruiting across all aspects of the business. We’ve already grown to a significant size in Scotland and plan to grow further every year. We expect head count here to be around 50 in 2025.”

Driver brief

High-quality service  
Considering the secrets of the company’s success in Scotland,  Laura Edgar, Operations Manager, says: “Our main strength is quality of service. As well as our expertise in our field, customers also appreciate that it’s easy to contact us.

“Our customers have direct access to the people they need to speak to. They can pick up the phone to Laurence, to me or to anyone else in the business – there’s no ‘wild-goose chase’ if they’re looking for information. If they have a question, we can give them answers there and then.

That’s been instrumental in building strong relationships – we now have between 8-10 regular customers in Scotland who are exporting fresh fish with us every day.”

Salmon being loaded for delivery throughout Europe

There are other customer benefits, as Edgar explains: “All of our fresh fish exports to Europe are run on O’Toole Vehicles with two drivers in the cab, this guarantees that our lorries arrive in SIVEP (Veterinary and Phytosanitary Inspection Service) Boulogne on time, regardless of delays at the Eurotunnel, or traffic diversions. The two driver operation is a game changer & our customers love it!”

She adds: “We don’t have any trucks in Scotland that are over four years old. The trucks have GPS, which enables us to see where they are anywhere in the world at any given time, and we give customers access to this too. In addition, we have real-time temperature information, which is vital for transporting temperature-controlled fresh or frozen fish or seafood. At any time of the day or night we can tell our customers the exact temperature of their product, at that point in time.”

The Bellshill depot

O’Toole Transport also delivers a seamless process on the other side of the Channel. It has a longstanding relationship with another family business, in France, which takes over distribution of the fish and seafood on arrival, dealing with all the formalities quickly and efficiently: “It’s like a Formula One pitstop operation,” observes O’Toole.

She concludes: “I believe the process is as fast now as it was before Brexit. So, there are no delays in getting the product onto the shelves and to the customer. And that’s what it’s all about – transporting fresh fish and seafood into France and beyond, as quickly and efficiently as possible.”