Entrepreneur Peter Aarosin sells off shares and exits RMS Group

Entrepreneur Peter Aarosin has sold his shares in the Goole-based ports operator RMS Group, and has officially left the business.

Since 1995, Mr Aarosin has had two spells at the helm of RMS during which it has grown from a single terminal at the Port of Goole to operations around the entire Humber estuary.

Mr Aarosin was a 50% shareholder in RMS from 1995 until 2004, when it was the subject of a management buyout supported by institutional investors Yorkshire Fund Managers and Partnership Investment Finance.

The management then invited Mr Aarosin to return as chief executive and minority shareholder in 2007 to lead the next phase of the company’s growth.

Mr Aarosin has now resigned from the company and sold his shares to the remaining shareholders in order to focus on his roles as a shareholder and managing director of Danbrit Holdings, an umbrella company operating in the UK and Denmark with businesses in the shipping, ship management, haulage, warehousing and industrial packing sectors.

Danbrit Holdings’ interests include a fleet of cargo ships and cargo ships chartering, operated through Danbrit Shipping, based in Goole; East Trans, a contractual logistics company based at Stallingborough, near Immingham, which operates more than 100 lorries and 200,000 sq ft of warehousing; and IPL Involvement Packing, an export packing and shipping company based in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

Danbrit Holdings is also a development partner of the Goole Intermodal Terminal.

The Goole Intermodal Terminal will bring together the town’s rail, sea, motorway and inland waterway links into a single, major integrated transport facility for business, benefiting from Humber Enterprise Zone status.

The scheme was hailed recently as a key Northern Powerhouse project and awarded Government funding as Prime Minister Theresa May launched her industrial strategy.

Mr Aarosin said: “This is a very exciting time for Danbrit, with a number of exciting opportunities at key stages of development, including Goole Intermodal Terminal which has the potential to become a major Northern logistics hub creating hundreds of jobs.

“I feel now is the right time for me to step away from RMS to enable me to focus fully on realising these growth opportunities.”

Born in Denmark, Mr Aarosin has been based in East Yorkshire for 38 years. He also had a tenure as Chair of the Bondholders marketing organisation from 2013 to 2015.

Under Mr Aarosin’s leadership the Bondholders expanded to become a Humber-wide network of more than 300 businesses and organisation promoting the region as the UK’s “Energy Estuary”.

Mr Aarosin is also a former President of the Goole Chamber of Commerce and a former Director of the Hull and Humber Chamber of Commerce.