Go Plant Fleet Services welcomes Graham Hale as new chief executive

Go Plant Fleet Services has welcomed Graham Hale as its new chief executive, as Vaughan McLeod switches to a non-executive position on the Board.

Hale (pictured), who joined the company on March 1, brings with him a successful track record after running FTSE 100 bank-owned and private equity-backed vehicle management businesses.

His wealth of financial, sales and commercial experience provides the base for strong, clear leadership in pursuit of the company’s long-term strategy.

 “I join the business at an exciting time within its evolution and am hugely looking forward to an exciting new challenge,” said Hale.

“Having been here for a few weeks, I’ve already been impressed by the financial, technical and operational expertise we have and the credibility we’re building in the market around our technical, operational and safety compliance.”

His new role reportedly ties in with a “controlled business evolution” following its merger with Essential Fleet Services in July 2017.

Hale said: “The business is well invested in a safety-compliant fleet, an operationally-efficient nationwide workshop network and a new leading-edge IT infrastructure.

“I’m looking forward to identifying areas in which we can grow value and market share by leveraging our market positioning coupled with a robust and compliant operational platform backed by the financial strength of our private equity partners, Endless LLP.

It has made a number of key Board appointments over the last 15 months, pooling talent from Serco  as Andrew Young became chief financial officer in October, 2018 and Philip Quelch was named as the company’s chief engineering officer in December 2017.

Go Plant Fleet Services’ executive chairman Andrew Cope said: “The rationale for the Endless acquisition of Essential Fleet Services followed by Go Plant was borne out of recognising the exciting and compelling strategic positioning a merged entity would provide in terms of market positioning and economies of scale.

“Having decided to recognise the exceptional restructuring costs associated with the merger within the last set of filed accounts of £2.4m, we can now look forward to exciting growth prospects.

“Go Plant Ltd nevertheless delivered a £4m profit for the 18 month period to June, 2018 with a strong set of results confidently forecast to June, 2019.”