Panther

Two-man delivery firm Panther has invested £1m in new vehicles and premises to handle increased demand from new contracts.

As a result from changing its model from general haulage to next day two-man delivery in 2010, it has attracted£9m in new business this year, including homeware retailers such as Bathstore, TC office furniture and Worldstores. To handle the increase in volumes it has taken on 45 Luton-bodied Renault vans this year and plans to add another 30 to its fleet in 2013.

MD Colin McCarthy said: “Panther has seen so much growth in demand for this new service but we believe we are still on the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps, unbelievably in 2012, there are still hundreds of companies out there offering a delivery service that takes several weeks.”

Its contracts see Panther collect orders from its clients before routing, sorting and delivering to the consumer the next working day, as long as it has the goods by 2am.

It has invested a further £250,000 in upgrading its IT systems to allow customers to track and trace their orders.

Next year the firm aims to increase the cut-off time for next day delivery from 6.30pm to 9pm, by starting picking earlier. It also hopes to expand into the one-man delivery market.

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