ABP are the UK's largest and leading rail-connected ports group. They handle a quarter of all Britain’s trade by sea every year, and their supply chains contribute £7.5 billion to the UK economy.
ABP are the UK's largest and leading rail-connected ports group. They handle a quarter of all Britain’s trade by sea every year, and their supply chains contribute £7.5 billion to the UK economy.
ABP are the UK'slargest and leading rail-connected ports group. They handle a quarter of allBritain’s trade by sea every year, and their supply chains contribute £7.5billion to the UK economy.
ABP retained ourservices to recruit a Group Head of Commercial Development to lead thedevelopment and growth of their business in the UK rail freight sector. Theclient had been searching for this placement for over a year themselves and asa result there was an urgency to fill this position.
As a group level role,the successful candidate would work closely with both the executive team andrelevant regional senior leadership teams. They would be responsible for creatinga new strategy for the rail freight market; identifying and delivering newbespoke rail business opportunities to support APB’s commercial offering,delivering key projects and achieving business growth objectives.
This was anexciting opportunity, where someone will have delegated authority to developrelevant business cases in line with ABP’s executive strategy. They would begiven the resources and financial backing they needed to make a strong impact.
To be successfulin this role candidates had to have rail freight experience and a good networkin this area. This drastically limited the talent pool as the UK rail freightmarket is a fairly small one. Not only this, but the UK rail freight sector isa challenging commercial environment; out of the ‘Big 3’ FOCs, only GBRailfreight had been trading at profit at the time of the search.
Because of thislimitation it was crucial to unearth all strong candidates with past andpresent experience with rail freight and use competency-based interviewing toassess if they were commercially strategic enough to succeed in this role.
Using acombination of desk-based research and extensive networking we were able toprovide the client with a particularly strong longlist, subsequent shortlistand placement within 60 days of kick off.
Out of fiveshortlisted candidates, ABP were torn between four exceptional individuals. We managedto secure an ideal fit for the role in a candidate from a freight operatingcompany with over 20 years’ experience.
