Driving entrepreneurship: Logistics firm targets acquisitions to double turnover
ABBEY Logistics is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with a record turnover of £45m.
The company, which employs 480 staff and has 300 trucks across nine UK bases, has ambitious growth plans for the next five years – with moves in to new sectors and European territories planned.
Steve Granite has been with the Bootle-based company since 1995 and took over as managing director in 2009.
He said: “When I first took over I spent the first six months going around the customer base and asking what would help customers if we were to diversify. Until 2009 the company has just focussed on bulk liquid transport in the UK. The plan was to diversify away from being a specialist tanker firm to being a logistics provider.”
Granite set a five-year plan in 2010 to double the size of the business, with the aim of offering extra services to its existing customer base.
He said: “We made two acquisitions to buy in expertise in other areas in 2010 and 2011 – by buying smaller companies we grew rapidly and we achieved the five-year plan in four years.”
In June 2014 Abbey Logistics also bought the assets of bulk powder transport business Seafield Logistics out of administration.
Its latest five-year plan was set in 2015 when turnover reached £35m – to grow the business to £70m by 2020. It has secured bank funding to fund the company’s ambitious growth plans over the next few years.
“We are at £45m now,” said Granite. “We are working on two strategies – one to look at acquisitions in northern Europe where we do a lot of transport to and from.
“We’d buy smaller businesses in that market to grow and put our stamp on. That would offer one of our four services in Europe outside the UK and then build on that from there.”
Abbey is also looking at expansion into the vehicle market in the UK, while it entered the warehousing market for the first time last year – taking space in Bromborough, Merseyside and on Jan 1 it doubled the size of the space available.
“The challenge when going into a new area is having that lack of knowledge so when we go into a new area, we get the people first, from a competitor. We build expertise and then the operation behind that,” explained Granite.
