Europa Road, a division of ambitious independent logistics business Europa Worldwide Group, is reporting a record-breaking start to 2017 with export figures at an all time high – and as a result has expanded its sales team.
Working across 11 UK branches, the Europa Road team has seen its most successful run of months to date in the first quarter of 2017, with export growth averaging 40 per cent. The team celebrated its busiest week on record in the first half of March, reporting a 61 per cent increase in export kilos compared to the same time last year, while import kilos were also up by 46 per cent.
As a result, the team has expanded by 30 per cent, employing more Account Managers than ever before as the business continues to run at a 25 per cent – 35 per cent consignment growth across the board.
Branch Network and Sales Director at Europa Worldwide Group Dionne Redpath said the growth of the team was in response to a period of hyper-growth across the business’s road freight sales in Europe.
She said: “Our Road sales team concluded 2016 having exceeded all targets and has had a very strong start to 2017, with a particular increase in sales coming, geographically, from Spain, Germany, France and Poland and sector-wise from the automotive, retail, post and parcel and ecommerce sectors including some very substantial tender wins.
“We have continued to target export consignment growth, which has been helped by the attractive Euro exchange rate – but, despite the exchange rate fluctuations, we also continue to see growth in our import, which is testament to the fantastic service offering we’ve created and continue to develop. We delighted to report that our import and export kilos combined are up by 54% compared to this time last year.”
Dionne added that the continued success of Europa Worldwide Group’s Road offering had been bolstered by the business’s new, bespoke £2m IT system Leonardo, which was designed and created specifically to suit Europa’s customers’ needs and is now fully embedded across the business.
She said: “After three challenging years of restructuring and the introduction of Leonardo last year we are now able to firmly focus on our growth targets which is proving promising, with turnover company-wide up by 25 per cent.
“Embedding Leonardo across the business was one of our biggest challenges to date, particularly in the period of May to September last year. However, once the implementation was complete, we saw an explosion in new business wins which, added to our very loyal client base, has really pushed our growth to amazing new levels. Our customers are really feeling the benefits of the system and the best thing is that we’ve only just started! The development plans continue apace with lots of exciting innovations on the horizon.”
Due to this stand-out period of growth for Europa Road, the team needs two new Account Managers and a Senior Account Manager, who will be based at the business’s £30m headquarters in Dartford.
Dionne added that this contrinued growth of the Road sales team, who are based in branches in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Glasgow, Heathrow, Manchester, Newcastle, Northampton, Nottingham, Southampton and Dartford, can be attributed to lots of hard work, excellent communication processes and solid products.
“Our teams have never been in a stronger position than they are now. Every single member of staff is 100 per cent engaged with Europa’s overall goal as a business, which is to be the market leader for the distribution of goods between the UK and Europe by 2018, and there is nothing to stand in the way of us hitting our targets. Our people are very talented, experienced and friendly and our services are market-leading, innovative and competitive. It really feels like we can achieve seriously good progress in 2017!” Dionne added.
