Premium express delivery company City Link has won a prestigious £3 million contract to deliver wine across the UK on behalf of the world's largest home delivery wine merchant.
Under the terms of the contract City Link will collect consignments from the Laithwaites Wine distribution centre in Gloucester and deliver across the UK, with the shipments accounting for almost one-third of the volume of Laithwaites Wine business.
Laithwaites Wine will use all of City Link's services, with 48 hour delivery as standard, and premium services such as next day delivery being offered to customers as an option.
Retailing direct to the public as Laithwaites Wine, Sunday Times Wine Club and a number of corporate wine clubs, Laithwaites Wine despatches more than three million deliveries a year.
Lee Andreas, Carrier Operations Manager, UK and Ireland, for Laithwaites Wine, said: "The improvements in technology which City Link has introduced over the last couple of years have given us the opportunity to enhance our customer service offering.
"We chose City Link because we are confident that they will deliver first time, every time for us successfully.
"Additionally the new MyCityLink service gives us a much higher level of visibility than would normally be experienced in the market: it is a superior service."
Duncan Faithfull, Sales & Marketing Director, City Link said: "We are delighted to be working with Laithwaites Wine and look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with them.
"City Link has invested heavily in new technology and we believe we now offer the best service in the market."
Launched this year, MyCityLink empowers customers - at a click of a mouse - to monitor the status of all their parcels in the City Link network in near real time, as well as track individual consignments.
As the information is up-to-date and accurate, clients are empowered to be able to update their own customers about the progress of individual consignments.
A first in the express delivery sector, MyCityLInk was developed at a cost of more than £1/4 million and can be accessed from any computer anywhere in the world that is connected to the internet.
With its caged network, electronic Trailer Trackers on its curtain-sided fleet and VanCam security cameras being introduced to its delivery vans, City Link is also well on the way to realising its ambition to offer the most secure network in the sector.