Outsourcing integrated platform pioneer

Edwin Bessant and his col­league Annette D’Abreo co-found­ed Ceu­ta Health­care 22 years ago. The busi­ness has now trans­formed through its inte­grat­ed plat­form into the Ceu­ta Group, an out­stand­ing, artic­u­late and high­ly praised out­sourc­ing ser­vices busi­ness. Their vision con­tin­ues to be clear and rev­o­lu­tion­ary in ensur­ing their group’s busi­ness con­tin­ues to be cut­ting edge and deliv­ers inno­va­tion.

Ceu­ta is cur­rent­ly acquir­ing new out­sourc­ing ser­vice busi­ness­es across Europe and they have plans for fur­ther expan­sion into Asia, Indone­sia and Malaysia. Ceu­ta has two field mar­ket­ing busi­ness­es in Bel­gium – Euro­pro­mo­tions and Pro­moSapi­ens – and they recent­ly opened new offices in New York. They also have a reach to more than 107 inter­na­tion­al mar­kets through their unique Alliance Net­work.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the com­pa­ny pio­neer­ing this rapid­ly expand­ing new busi­ness out­sourc­ing con­cept has at its core a tal­ent for antic­i­pat­ing future trends and ben­e­fit­ing from them.

“One of my pre­vi­ous roles at Pfiz­er Con­sumer, for­mer­ly AHP, was to analyse trends in Euro­pean mar­ket dynam­ics and to under­stand the pos­si­ble out­comes two or three years hence, as well as iden­ti­fy­ing how the com­pa­ny should embrace these changes,” explains Mr Bessant.

He met Ceu­ta co-founder Ms D’Abreo at Pfiz­er. “I wasn’t think­ing about set­ting up my own com­pa­ny,” says Ms D’Abreo. “But when Edwin and I start­ed talk­ing, we realised there were a lot of merg­ers and acqui­si­tions tak­ing place and so this was the right time to launch some­thing new that would sup­port the extra brands these new com­pa­nies were tak­ing on. Now, espe­cial­ly in con­sumer health­care and food and drink, we’re see­ing a new wave of this M&A activ­i­ty.”

The unique inte­grat­ed brand out­sourc­ing plat­form it has built pro­vides a brand with every ser­vice it might need

Based on this expe­ri­ence and insight, Ceu­ta has enjoyed rapid but sus­tain­able growth by build­ing out its ser­vices to meet the needs of the fast-chang­ing retail sec­tor with the acqui­si­tion of a range of niche con­sul­tan­cies offer­ing high-qual­i­ty ser­vices in retail, mer­chan­dis­ing and mar­ket research, among oth­er ser­vices.

The unique inte­grat­ed brand out­sourc­ing plat­form it has built pro­vides a brand with every ser­vice it might need. This one-stop shop deliv­ers an expe­di­ent, tai­lor-made solu­tion to meet the future out­sourc­ing needs of the indus­try.

Ms D’Abreo says: “Our inter­na­tion­al net­work and our uni­fied and inte­grat­ed plat­form means that we and the client can all get togeth­er on one phone call. The fact that Edwin and I and our senior team have worked for large cor­po­rates means we speak their lan­guage.”

The com­pa­ny recent­ly received invest­ment fund­ing from Jug­ger­naut Cap­i­tal Part­ners, a lead­ing US pri­vate equi­ty firm, and now employs some 350 full-time per­son­nel, with a fur­ther 2,500 on its pay­roll, and an earn­ings before inter­est, tax­es, depre­ci­a­tion and amor­ti­sa­tion (EBITDA) of £6.4 mil­lion. This is rapid­ly ris­ing thanks to con­tin­ued Euro­pean acqui­si­tions and core growth capa­bil­i­ties.

The com­pa­ny is proud of its Investors in Peo­ple gold award. “We always say that we’ll go beyond the con­tract with clients and offer them some­thing more than they asked for,” says Ms D’Abreo.

In order to sup­port and pro­mote the next gen­er­a­tion of young entre­pre­neurs, Ceu­ta is also a patron of The Prince’s Trust. After all, for Mr Bessant, Ms D’Abreo and their team, it’s all about antic­i­pat­ing the future and mak­ing the most of the new oppor­tu­ni­ties it offers.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.ceutagroup.com