Those who have followed ATC for years will recognise this blog’s title. As a team, we always like to take some time to reflect on the year gone by and to celebrate the stand-out moments that have occurred in what is a very fast-paced environment. Today, we’re only too happy to share these highlights with you.
Expanding Our Team Across Europe
Last year, we wrote about our industry’s challenges regarding recruitment – particularly driver shortages. While these challenges remain, we are pleased and blown away to report that our employee numbers grew to 200 by the end of December 2023.
The roles added are not just driving positions. They span across the various departments and locations of the business, including Technical Services, Transportation, Finance/HR, and Business Operations. We have added experts in several vital business areas, including Sustainability, HR, Safety, and Security. You can view our current open positions on our Careers page.
Furthermore, our team now comprises 31 nationalities speaking over 40 languages. Having a diverse team is something I am very proud of.
Growth in Apprenticeships
Apprenticeships have also supported our team’s growth in 2023 and brought tremendous energy into the business. As our Innovation Lead, Drené, said in May, “Now more than ever, we want to encourage people to get involved in this vital sector of Logistics and Supply Chain to support the growing demand for services”.
Coming into the new year, we are affiliated with multiple apprenticeship programmes with 8 apprentices and 3 interns across 5 programmes, in 4 countries. Most recently, we announced the appointment of our first female mechanic apprentice, Jazmin Szymlowska.
Team Building Initiatives
As our team grows, holding cross-location team-building workshops and having fun days/events throughout the year is even more essential. Highlights that stand out for 2023 include:
St Patrick’s Day celebrations
The start of summer ice cream day & BBQ
Christmas Jumper Day
In addition, it’s also important to us that we give back to our communities and support local charities. Thanks to our Social and Events team, ATC participated in many charity runs in 2023, including:
Daffodil Day
Darkness into Light
Breast Cancer Awareness Month
‘Movember’
We look forward to continuing and growing these initiatives in 2024.
New Locations
Our footprint across Europe has grown substantially over the past 12 months to meet the needs of our customers, with physical offices now located in Ireland, Germany, Netherlands and most recently, London in the United Kingdom and Madrid in Spain.
We also extended our services with local teams in several European locations, including France, Italy, Poland and Sweden, and a new team in Berlin. Keep a look out on LinkedIn as we are partial to posting a selfie on location in front of some famous landmarks!
TAPA Approval
Critical to our operations is security. We have been a Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA) member for many years. In 2023, we were re-assessed for two accreditations – FSR Facility Security Requirements and TSR – Trucking Sustainability Requirements.
Led by our Business Operations Manager, Ann Roe, we excelled in both assessments and received certification for another three years. You can read more about TAPA and these certifications in our blog “ATC Receives TAPA Stamp of Approval”.
DCW Frankfurt Exhibition
Represented by our Sustainability Manager, Rainer Hoerbst and our Data Centre Project Manager, Lize Simon, ATC took our first stand at Data Centre World in Frankfurt last May, where one of the key discussion points was sustainability in our industry.
Naturally, this felt like a good fit for us as it allowed us to showcase our sustainability initiatives among over 300 delegates. Lize provided excellent feedback on this event, which you can read in our blog, “ATC Exhibit at DCW Frankfurt”.
Speaking of sustainability, another highlight for us this year was being shortlisted for a Fleet Transport Award under the ‘Environment and Sustainability’ category in recognition of our ongoing work towards being carbon neutral by 2030.
Roll-out of HVO to Fleet
It would be remiss of me not to include the introduction of HVO into our fleet as a massive milestone of 2023. After a rigorous trial, we introduced HVO to replace diesel in most vehicles. The key findings from our trial were outstanding, and I encourage you to look at them here when you have time.
As Rainer said in his blog, “While we have adopted HVO 100 as our bridging fuel for now, ultimately, we will be transitioning into the electrification of our fleet for the short and mid-range transportation and hydrogen technology for mid to long-haulage operations.”
In that vein, we introduced several battery-electric light goods vehicles into our fleet in 2023 and look forward to announcing more new additions very soon.
The Life of the ATC Honeybee
Before I move on from the subject of sustainability in this blog, another lovely story that I have personally found fascinating is that of our onsite Honeybees, which are said to be thriving according to the latest instalment from our beekeeper, Nessa. You can read the newest update from October 2023 here.
Leadership Team Graduation
Education is something that I am deeply passionate about and committed to driving forward in ATC. We partnered with the Irish Management Institute on a Leadership Development programme for our current and future leaders. Our inaugural cohort graduated in late 2023.
The objective of this program was to prepare participants for increased autonomy and responsibility, empowering them to lead high-performing teams, enabling them to build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders, improving their self-awareness, communication, and presentation skills, and encouraging their engagement in a bias-free and informed decision-making process.
From my point of view, I’ve had the privilege of participating in the Enterprise Ireland Leadership 4 Growth programme over the past 12 months. “Leadership 4 Growth is targeted at CEOs from all sectors committed to leading their well-established businesses to even greater global growth. Leadership 4 Growth requires extensive commitment from participants.”
There have been many stand-out moments, which I’ll talk about in a separate blog, but one that comes to mind is commencing our 3rd module as a group in New York back in October.
Once again, on behalf of the team, I thank you for joining us on this journey and look forward to sharing more highlights with you in 2024.
