Aurelius Group will drop the ‘BT’ from BT Fleet Solutions upon completion of the acquisition in October. The rebrand is expected to take effect within the next month or two.
The company has an agreement with BT Group to change the name within 12 months, but decided to act sooner by introducing the “working name” of Fleet Solutions while “we look at a strong brand that has strong recognition”, said Aurelius UK managing director Tristan Nagler.
“We have a lot of confidence that we can build something of value and there’s a prize to transform the business into something substantial in this marketplace,” he added.
This is likely to involve further acquisitions, investment into the organisation’s existing services and the introduction of new services.
High on the wish list is a move into heavy goods vehicles – all 65 workshops can handle trucks up to 7.5 tonnes, but just 28 have the facilities for heavier trucks – as well as accident management and funding.
“We will encourage strong growth . We will start with the business as it and see if there is anything it has been held back from achieving or developing,” said Nagler.
“Then it’s about customer wins and, in due course, growth by acquisition. Our hope is to transform the business – in fact, I’d be amazed if there wasn’t something major in this journey. We know we have to make some step changes here.”
Established in 2002, BT Fleet Solutions employs around 950 staff around the UK, and manages more than 80,000 vehicles for over 26 blue chip customers across diversified industries.
That includes BT’s own fleet, some 35,000 vehicles that includes the Openreach fleet (29,000 vehicles), which Aurelius says it will continue to service.
The 80,000-strong fleet of mission-critical vehicles and specialist ancillary equipment receives a range of services from service, maintenance and repair (SMR) and fleet management, to telematics and accident management.
Services are provided through the 65-strong, UK-wide garage network, with more than 500 partner garages and more than 50 mobile technicians.
BT Fleet Solutions has been voted Van/Truck Fleet Management Company of the Year twice in a row at the Commercial Fleet Awards, as well as Supplier of the Year at the 2017 Fleet News Awards.
It also strengthened its core offering last year, with the acquisition of SEV Automotive and Plant, a UK-based mobile vehicle maintenance and servicing business.
SEV’s capabilities were added to its network of garages locations to help accelerate its plans to provide fixed and mobile SMR to new and existing customers, to accompany its fleet management service for business critical fleets.
Aurelius Group is a pan-European investment group with offices in Munich, London, Stockholm, Madrid and Amsterdam. Since it was founded in 2006, it has grown from a local turnaround investor to an international multi-asset manager.
For more on Aurelius' plans for the Fleet Solutions business, see the October 25th edition of Fleet News.
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Bauer B2B group editor Stephen Briers has been an automotive business journalist since 1995. He has been editor of Fleet News since 2009 and before that was editor of Automotive Management for almost seven years. He now oversees both brands, as well as RAIL magazine.
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