Lavendon appoints new Gardemann managing director

Lavendon has appointed a new managing director for its Gardemann subsidiary in Germany to replace Maarten Mijnlieff who is leaving the company.

The new managing director is Matthew Hickin, a UK national who has lived in Germany for over a decade. He has no experience of the powered access sector and was most recently working in senior roles with Vaillant Group, the German heating, ventilation and air-conditioning company, for whom he has worked since 2006. He was director of strategy & business sevelopment at Vaillant before becoming a member of its management team in the Netherlands and in Asia-Pacific.

Mr Hickin will take up his new post on 1 June.

"It took quite some time to find a strong new manager with the right skills and experience, who is capable of taking our business further forward", said Lavendon's chief executive, Kevin Appleton. "But I am confident that we have found exactly this person in Matthew Hickin."

Mr Appleton told AI that at the time of Lavendon's acquisition of Gardemann in 2006 Mr Mijnlieff had agreed to stay on for two years to manage the integration, but had extended his stay to four and a half years to see the company through the crisis period.

"We began discussing Maarten's desire to potentially leave the company and the change in management structure associated with this some time ago", said Mr Appleton in a Lavendon press release, "We then reached a mutual decision that now was the right time for a change, both for Maarten and for Gardemann.

"In Gardemann, we have a company that enjoys a solid position in the market, an excellent reputation and one that offers an outstanding base for further expansion. Maarten Mijnlieff has made a significant contribution to the company's success, for which we would like to thank him."

Mr Mijnlieff was one of the former Brambles managers who acquired Gardemann from Brambles in 2002. Lavendon said he was going to pursue new challenges and develop his own business interests.

Mr Hickin will be supported in his new role by incoming operations director Klaus Maskort, an ex-Zooom commercial manager who for the last three years has been based at Lavendon's UK head office as group commercial director. Mr Maskort took up his new role on 1 May.

Lavendon will now be seeking to recruit a replacement for Mr Maskort in the UK.