Executive Board

• 

  Andrew Tinkler
  Chief Executive Officer

  A life-long entrepreneur, Andrew Tinkler’s first involvement with the Eddie Stobart business was as a friend of the Stobart sons and an occasional cleaner of trucks for the company as a teenager. He later served his apprenticeship as a cabinet maker and went self employed in the mid-1980s, forming WA Tinkler Building Contractor.

  Following a series of successful contracts the company became WA Developments with a start-up turnover of some £600,000 a year. WA Developments became a thriving and hugely successful business, completing large civil engineering and railway infrastructure contracts across the UK and in Europe. By the late 1990s the company’s turnover had grown to more than £20 million a year and Andrew’s old friend William Stobart joined the business as a shareholding director in 2001.

  Soon, Andrew took a renewed interest in the Eddie Stobart business, and with William Stobart, acquired the company in 2004, immediately becoming CEO. The Stobart Group now counts airports, ports, rail, biomass and estates businesses as part of the Group. Andrew is credited with turning the company around during the years following the 2004 acquisition, and is central to the strategic development and vision that forms the backbone of the Group’s multimodal offering and FTSE250 listing today.

• 

  William Stobart
  Chief Operating Officer

  A member of the Eddie Stobart family, William started his career with the haulage company as a teenager, carrying out a broad spectrum of roles during three decades in the business, including HGV driver, planner and distribution manager. This comprehensive early experience at the heart of the UK transport and logistics sector provided William with an in-depth knowledge and understanding at every level in the business.

  In 2001 William joined Andrew Tinkler at WA Developments as a shareholding director to pursue other entrepreneurial interests, and in 2004, following the pair’s acquisition of Eddie Stobart Limited, he returned as Chief Operating Officer.

  As COO William focuses his extensive experience and leadership skills on the core operations of the group with a particular responsibility for the transport and distribution division.

• 

  Ben Whawell
  Chief Financial Officer

  Ben Whawell joined the Board as Chief Financial Officer in March 2008. Ben started his career in Grant Thornton where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant and progressed to Senior Corporate Finance Manager. He joined Stobart in 2004 after advising on the acquisition of the Group by WA Developments International.

  Since joining Stobart, Ben has managed the International Division, led a number of other areas in the Group, implemented financial and IT changes across the business and was involved in the merger with Westbury in 2007. Since the formation of the Company, he has overseen the acquisitions of James Irlam, Innovate Chilled, WA Developments, LSA, CLDA and more recently the Biomass business. Ben received the North West Financial Director of the Year Award in 2009.

• 

  Richard Butcher
  Deputy CEO and Company Secretary

  Deputy-CEO and Company Secretary for the Group, Richard Butcher heads up the Stobart Estates division and brings a long track record of asset management and financial expertise to the Executive Board. He has been part of the Stobart business since 1997, when he joined following 14 years in senior positions within HSBC Corporate Finance.

  As one of the longest serving Stobart leaders on the Executive Board, Richard has held a number of key positions within the company including managing director of Eddie Stobart Limited. More recently Richard has played a key role in the development and leveraging of the company’s property assets, such as the Group’s extensive land and commercial interests in the North West. He has also concentrated on other property purchases and disposals across the Group, as well as continuing the Stobart tradition of building close and lasting relationships with customers. Richard is also responsible for managing the Group’s extensive insurance requirements

• 

  Allan Jenkinson
  Chief Executive Stobart Biomass

  Founder of AW Jenkinson Forest Products, Allan started in business in the mid-1960s by collecting the unwanted sawdust from mills around Penrith in Cumbria and selling it on to local farms to meet the demand for bedding in cattle sheds.

  A pioneering environmentalist, Allan’s business expanded across the North West and into Scotland, with the growth of new emerging uses for timber by-product such as bark for garden mulch and peat-free compost preparations. Today, demand for such products worldwide is enormous, with timber by-product used on an industrial scale for board manufacture and fuelling new carbon neutral power stations.

  In partnership with the Stobart Group, the business has grown further still, now handling several million tonnes of timber by-product a year and running a fleet of some 500 specialised vehicles to manage the substantial haulage and logistics operation. AW Jenkinson Forest Products services link forestry, sawmilling, wood processing, building and wood recycling sectors with the demand for pulp, paper and panel manufacture, agriculture, horticulture and amenity markets in an environmentally responsible cycle that makes maximum use of forest resources. The partnership with Stobart Biomass services the rapidly growing market for renewable energy generation.

• 

  Charles Egerton
  Director Stobart Biomass

  A qualified chartered accountant, Charles has spent the last 11 years in the biomass industry, initially with A.W. Jenkinson Forest Products as finance director, and now also as a director of the Stobart Biomass business. Charles was instrumental in orchestrating the partnership between Stobart Group and A.W. Jenkinson in 2009, and has very successfully helped grow the joint venture since then.

  Charles completed his accountancy training with KPMG in London in 1974 and soon after moved within the company to their Australasia head office in Sydney. At the end of the 1970s he returned to the UK with his family to become a partner in Cumbria-based accountancy firm Armstrong Watson & Co before joining A.W. Jenkinson Forest Products as finance director in the late 1990s.