The Challenge

I joined Pallecon in 2013, 6 months after they'd been bought by CHEP from CEVA logistics. Within CEVA, all of the 7 country business units mentioned above were parts of CEVA's logistics businesses in those countries, and so when they came in to CHEP's ownership there was little to no reporting, and no locally based relations set up with authorities such as the HMRC (and foreign equivalents) - basically a purchase had taken place and the local business unit told just to "sort it out"! And, before I came, they hadn't bothered

What I Did

I went in as an interim. Initially stabilised the very demotivated teams, got the right mix of staff in place, and upgraded the systems in terms of their operability and the information they provided to allow for sensible system generated stats on sales, profit, stock levels and visibility of their manufacturing operations. Then I got into sorting the tax compliance across the 7 business units, with much time spent with non UK lawyers and tax specialists, getting historic books and filings up to date, pleading deals on historic tax and penalties due, and getting things straight going forwards.

What I Achieved
I got all the above done. However, my greatest achievement was in completely redefining the commercials of the business, moving away from a charging structure based on the storage containers being storage assets sitting in warehouses for months on end, to focussing on those assets instead being transit assets, where we could earn far more revenue and profit in their initial hire and their final de-hire phases, along with providing some of the high margin plastic liners that were needed every time a container was filled with product. My innovation was transformative for the business, and lead to my being made interim Managing Director between Oct 2015 - June 2016. During this period, sales went up slightly, profit went up significantly, and levels of capex per £ of sale went down considerably as we recycled our assets far more frequently