Member Article

Europa Announces Ambitious Growth Plans

Europa Worldwide Group’s Managing Director Andrew Baxter and his Board has unveiled its ambitious vision for the future. Since Andrew acquired the company in 2013, turnover has increased three-fold and its profitability 16-fold.

The ambitious and innovative logistics operator is featured in The Sunday Times Top Track 250, as one of the fastest growing privately-owned mid-market businesses in the UK. Its exceptional results have seen the company showcase record turnover and profit, the best in Europa Worldwide Group’s 50-year history. Europa revealed record turnover (£180m) and profit (£5.2m) in its annual financial results (year-end 31st December 2018).

By the end of 2019 this had grown to £205m (with profits of £6m). In addition, the business has doubled its employees and now employs over 950 staff.

Andrew comments: “We have set our sights on aiming to hit a turnover of £1bn through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth.”

The team shared their vision at Europa’s first all staff conference, where for the first time all employees were invited to attend. The independent logistics operator has six divisions – Europa Road, Europa Air & Sea, Europa Showfreight, Europa Warehouse, Europa Contact Centre and Continental Cargo Carriers – with 16 sites in the UK, Hong Kong and Belgium.

Held at the QEII Centre in central London, the EuropaCom 2020 event was attended by 350 employees from the UK and beyond, including those working within its recently acquired businesses, Continental Cargo Carriers and Europa Contact Centre (previously part of Menzies Response).

Each division shared its success so far, with Europa Air & Sea revealing an increase in turnover from £15m to £35m since launching, with its Seafreight team shipping 10 times more containers compared to 2013, showcasing its rapid growth.

Europa Warehouse revealed a turnover increase from £5m in 2014 to £18m in 2019, after winning a number of significant contracts, existing customer growth and the acquisition of new sites in Rushden and Ashford. Looking ahead the division aims to double its portfolio with the launch of its new £60m 715,000 sq ft state-of-the-art, logistics facility in the Midlands, set to be completed in June 2020.

Europa Road, where everything started for the company, continued to reveal record results, with turnover increasing from £108m to £122m since last year.

Andrew Baxter said: “Since taking over the company six years ago, my strategy was to put every piece of profit back into the business and this has certainly paid off. Across every division, we’ve seen fantastic results, and as we look ahead to 2020 and our vision for the future, we have set out plans to deliver exciting innovations, game-changing initiatives and outstanding efforts in every single area of the business.

“Our strategy continues to focus on long term profitability by improving our services to customers, whilst driving down costs and driving up quality. We have a great team at Europa - the best people in the business - so sharing our plans and vision with everyone is essential, as we continue to evolve and growth, which is why this year we decided to launch our all staff conference and I’m pleased to say it was a huge success.”

Other areas addressed included new innovations within Europa’s IT department and continued developments with its bespoke IT solution, Leonardo, which will gradually be rolled out to every part of the business. The Continental Cargo Carriers team, 18 of which travelled over to the conference from Belgium, revealed its plans for a clear and exciting future ahead and how after being taken over by Europa in 2018 they are now in a strong place to develop the business and services in 2020, offering products that differentiate their offering from its competitors.

Europa continues to go from strength to strength and now looking ahead to 2020, it is set to be a prosperous year for the leading logistics firm.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rebecca .