French company the Gaussin group has appointed crane veteran Steve Filipov as deputy chief executive.
Publicly quoted Gaussin is based in Héricourt - west of Mulhouse near Belfort - and produces a wide range of clean terminal and airport tugs and tractors, as well as buses and other pioneering vehicles, using both its battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell technology.
Steve Filipov
The appointment follows the departure of chief operating officer Dmytro Khoruzhyi in December after less than three months in the job and is part of a reorganisation plan initiated by chief executive Christophe Gaussin, in the face of this and numerous financial challenges. These include the commercial court in Chalon-sur-Saône placing its Metalliance subsidiary into a safeguard procedure (Chapter 11/administration) in late January.
Metalliance is based in Saint-Vallier, south of Lyon, in the old Konecranes facility, with a plant in Génelard near Monceau Les Mines, the original home of PPM/Terex cranes.
Filipov will also join the group's Executive Committee and will be responsible for stepping up sales, helping control costs and “rapidly put in place the financing required for the group's activities.” His contacts with a number of investment groups will, it is hoped, assist him with this task. The primary objectives will be to extract Metalliance, from the safeguard procedure and appoint a new Executive Committee to make it all happen.
A Gaussin autonomous tractor
The company had an order book of €148 million at the start of the year, but needs to step up production, solve supply chain issues, reduce overheads and with any luck return to profitability.
Steve Filipov is currently a non-executive director of Cranes 1 and Atlas Crane Services. He spent around 24 years in total with Terex, starting with PPM, and was president of Terex Cranes until 2019, when he left to become chief executive of Manitex where he served until late 2022.
Steve Filipov certainly has his hands full with this business, all manner of words spring to mind involving cases and baskets, but the business has enormous potential with some seemingly fantastic products and blue chip customers such as Amazon and others, not to mention an order book substantially greater than 12 months and some substantial production facilities in an area he is familiar with.
Gaussin seems to have suffered from over trading and going on an acquisition spree for which it did not have a management team in place capable of handling it. This could prove to be a real career maker for Filipov. He has the knowledge, the experience, the credibility in the right circles and seemingly the financial contacts to create a ‘silk purse’ out of the company.
If you want to learn more about the company’s products take a look at the video below.
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