Toll Holdings incoming chief executive Brian Kruger will continue with the company’s aggressive acquisition strategy once he officially takes the title in January, he has told ATN.
Kruger, who has already settled into the company’s outgoing boss Paul Little’s office, says the company is proactively looking for acquisition opportunities in the global forwarding sector.
“If we see a good opportunity come on the market and we think we can get value from a market-related synergy or cost-related synergy or utilisation benefits, then we’ll obviously have a look at it,” Kruger says.
By mailto:rzivkusic@acpmagazines.com.au”>Ruza Zivkusic | October 27, 2011
Toll Holdings incoming chief executive Brian Kruger will continue with the company’s aggressive acquisition strategy once he officially takes the title in January, he has told ATN.
Kruger, who has already settled into the company’s outgoing boss Paul Little’s office, says the company is proactively looking for acquisition opportunities in the global forwarding sector.
“If we see a good opportunity come on the market and we think we can get value from a market-related synergy or cost-related synergy or utilisation benefits, then we’ll obviously have a look at it,” Kruger says.
“It will be more opportunistic rather than us out there knocking on doors.”
He hopes also to grow the company “organically”, targeting online retail in Australia.
It has brought in more sub-contractors to help juggle the company’s resources between the south-east coast and the resources and energy sector.
“The assets that need to go into resources and energy sector are quite specialised equipment because trucks and trailers have been running up and down the coast so it’s not very easy to take equipment out of one sector and put it into another sector,” he adds.
“The Toll mining services has a very specific fleet replacement program; a lot of the conditions that the fleet are operating in are quite challenging and it’s important that you are turning over your vehicles and you have to keep them well maintained.
“But they do tend to turn over more quickly in those tough operating environments, so we have a well-defined fleet replacement program but most of the investments that we make in that sector are driven by new contract wins.”
This year’s natural disasters in Queensland, New Zealand and Japan cost the company $13 million.
But it is something that the company is well prepared for as rarely does a year go by without a disaster, Kruger says.
“Clearly it was more extensive and went for a longer period than other weather events that we have had,” he adds
“We’ve had to have contingency plans in place before. We needed to know how to get freight to different markets using different modes and routes – we have been through all that before so we know how to react.”
The company plans to reduce its greenhouse emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and will introduce new green strategies such as new equipment, driver training and redesign of its facilities.