Fleet management specialist Fleet Logistics is looking to aggressively expand its managed fleet in the UK on the back of a European management reorganization which sees previous Commercial Director Stuart Donnelly assume direct responsibility for the region.

Donnelly, 36, has been appointed Chief Regional Officer for Northern Europe including the UK and Nordics – Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland - with full operational and profit and loss responsibility for the region.

His appointment is one of four chief regional officers made by Chief Executive Officer Rainer Laber covering Northern, Western, Central and Southern Europe. The move is designed to give more autonomy to the regions as Fleet Logistics looks to double its pan-European fleet in size from 100,000 to 200,000 vehicles within the next three years, according to the company.

As the new head of the UK, Donnelly said that he wanted to grow the UK fleet in line with group growth targets by the end of 2013 and saw two main methods of doing so.

“Our first line of attack will be to primarily target organic growth with large fleets operating more than 500 vehicles in the UK. This is where our expertise lies and where we have built our reputation for creating the optimum value over the years,” he said. “Our second line of attack will be in providing fleet management services to fleet managers and third party service providers with vehicle sourcing, invoice control and web-based real time reporting to enable self-service, best in class fleet management, resulting in optimum value creation.”

Donnelly said that in the UK, the company would be adding considerable resources to help facilitate the intended expansion of the fleet.

Among these was the appointment of Andrew Brown, who has recently joined the company as strategic account manager from Mercedes-Benz.

Brown, 39, has over 12 years’ experience with Mercedes-Benz, most recently as key account manager responsible for major fleets operating more than 300 vehicles, including BP, Shell, KPMG and Barclays.

“I am very excited to be joining Fleet Logistics at this stage in its development,” he said. “They are a fantastic company with great people and a truly global presence. It was too good an opportunity to turn down.”

In his new role, Brown will be responsible for helping manage a designated number of large national and multi-national fleets through a consultative approach intended to reduce costs and add value.

As strategic account manager, he reports directly to Stuart Donnelly, with dotted line responsibility to Mike Greatrex, group director of account management.

At the same time, UK operations manager Paul Gregory has been appointed Country Head for the UK. Formerly customer services manager at Lombard Vehicle Management, a company he worked with for over 30 years, Gregory now assumes overall operational responsibility for the UK, reporting directly to Donnelly.

Fleet Logistics was acquired by German certification company TÜV SÜD in September 2012, and Donnelly said that the company was now investing heavily in its systems and processes to ensure that it continued to provide a first rate service to fleet customers.