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
