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.
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ABP retained our services to recruit a Group Head of Commercial Development to lead the development and growth of their business in the UK rail freight sector. The client had been searching for this placement for over a year themselves and as a 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 and relevant regional senior leadership teams. They would be responsible for creating a new strategy for the rail freight market; identifying and delivering new bespoke rail business opportunities to support APB’s commercial offering, delivering key projects and achieving business growth objectives.
This was an exciting opportunity, where someone will have delegated authority to develop relevant business cases in line with ABP’s executive strategy. They would be given the resources and financial backing they needed to make a strong impact.
To be successful in 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 freight market is a fairly small one. Not only this, but the UK rail freight sector is a challenging commercial environment; out of the ‘Big 3’ FOCs, only GB Railfreight had been trading at profit at the time of the search.
Because of this limitation it was crucial to unearth all strong candidates with past and present experience with rail freight and use competency-based interviewing to assess if they were commercially strategic enough to succeed in this role.
Using a combination of desk-based research and extensive networking we were able to provide the client with a particularly strong longlist, subsequent shortlist and placement within 60 days of kick off.
Out of five shortlisted candidates, ABP were torn between four exceptional individuals. We managed to secure an ideal fit for the role in a candidate from a freight operating company with over 20 years’ experience.
