Bibby Distribution has reorganised internally following a  two year acquisition spree and a series of contract wins and renewals in 2012.

It will now divide its operations across four separate customer sectors; food manufacturing, FMCG, packaging, and paper and industrial.

Iain Speak, chief executive of Bibby, told MT.co.uk that the changes were necessary in order for each division to be seen as experts on the customer sectors they serve.

“We have made organisational changes so that we can articulate better what we do, who we do it for and how we work. And to progressively become more market facing and more market led.

“We have been buying businesses and growing, and tipping everything into one big bucket – we needed to organise the bucket to focus on the markets we want to develop. We can then develop real value  propositions for those clients instead of trying to be all things to all men,” he said.

“When you say restructuring it has a bit of a negative connotation. It is not negative, it is positive restructuring, such that we can extract a second lot of value from the growth that we have enjoyed.”

In 2012 Bibby won or resigned contracts with Fairfield FoodTec, Plastic Omnium, Ryvita, SAICA as well as a five regional consolidation centres operation deal with  Morrisons .

In 2011 Bibby acquired Atchison Topeka to make its first move into the food ingredient supply chain. In the same year, ending 31 December, turnover rose from £230.2m to £247.6m but pre-tax profit fell from £7m to £3.8m, primarily due to the 2010 loss of a major distribution contract with Nisa-Today to DHL.

That year it also acquired TM Logistics, Taygroup and some of the contracts of collapsed MRS Distribution.

Speak explained that Bibby was about to start implementation of a single transport management system across all its divisions, which was a platform it has not run before due to the high amount of acquisition activity in recent years.

Paul Kavanagh, formerly MD of Peel Ports Group’s Medway division, was recruited in August as chief operating officer to, according to Speak, “organise the business into better shape”.

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