Elior UK company profile 2005-2009

30 October 2015
Elior UK company profile 2005-2009

View Elior company profile 2010-2015 here](/c/business/companies/33937/elior-uk)
View Elior company profile 1991-2004 here

ELIOR ARTICLES ON THE CATERERMike Audis - Recession presents "great opportunity" for contract caterers to prove worthA minute on the clock - Catherine Roe (Royal Institution of Great Britain)[Food at Art Galleries (Digby Trout) ](/articles/319455)Caterer 100 (2006) - Mike AudisCaterer 100 (2006) - Tim WestSimone Taylor, branch manageer, Heal's (Digby Trout)ÂTeutonic platesCaterer 100 (2005) - Mike Audis

TIMELINE

2005-2009

  • November 2009 Elior's Avenance Healthcare division wins a £5m, five-year catering at Swansea's Singleton Hospital. Existing contracts in South Wales include Admiral Insurance and the DVLA.
  • October 2009 Avenance City & Corporate is awarded [Hospitality Assured accreditation ](/articles/330647)by the Institute of Hospitality for the second year running.
  • September 2009 A boardroom reshuffle sees Catherine Roe promoted to managing director of contracts, a role chief executive Mike Audis has filled since Lynn McClleland left in November 2008. Azure managing director Adam Elliott succeeds Roe as managing director of concessions while Charlotte Davies moves to director of corporate communications and corporate responsibility.
  • June 2009 Olive Catering Services wins a staff feeding contract at financial services provider Capital One in Nottingham from long-term incumbent Avenance.
  • May 2009 Azure wins a [five-year, £7.5m turnover contract at Queens Park Rangers ](/articles/327660)football club in west London, where it will feed fans via 20 kiosks and four restaurants and service the conference facilities on non-match days.
  • May 2009 Elior UK extends its training programme to agency workers for the first time to attract good temporary workers back year-on-year. The company has nearly 8,000 full-time permanent staff and about 4,000 casual and agency workers.
  • - May 2009 Heritage caterer Digby Trout Restaurants wins a two-year, £5m-per-annum contract extension with the Historic Royal Palaces charity to provide approximately ten restaurants and kiosks at the Tower of London, Hampton Court and Kensington Palace. The contracts date back to 2004.
    April 2009 Azure is awarded a £3m, three-year deal to cater at Murrayfield in Edinburgh, Scotland's national rugby stadium. It is Azure's largest Scottish rugby wins in the past 12 months which brough renewals from Glasgow Rangers, Hearts and Hibernian.
  • March 2009 Avenance loses its contract at the British Library's Boston Spa site in North Yorkshire to Peyton and Byrne. It also loses its contract at television and film editing system manufacturer Quantel to Talkington Bates.
  • March 2009 Audis reveals that the 2004 union of B&I caterer Avenance and concession business Eliance Restaurants to create Elior UK has surpassed its target of doubling the business in five years. Profitability has improved eight-fold at the group, which has a £280m turnover and 10,000 full-time staff. Since September 2008, Elior has won new contracts with Westland Helicopters, 3M, DLA Piper and North London Schools. Extensions include Fidelity, Schroders, National Museum of Wales and Duxford Imperial War Museum, Rugby School, Malvern, Linklaters and Tesco.
  • March 2009 Elior loses its contract to cater for Jockey Club Racecourses at its sites in Carlisle, Huntingdon, Kempton Park and Nottingham to newly-appointed sole caterer Compass.
  • February 2009 Compass's Eurest Services wins back the contract it lost last year to Elior at IT services company Computacenter.
  • February 2009 Elior supports a Food Standards Agency's campaign by [working to reduce the level of saturated fats ](/articles/326114)it uses.
  • February 2009 Elior wins a multi-millionpound deal at the Yeovil, Somerset, facilities of helicopter manufacturer Westland Helicopters from long-term incumbent, Compass's Eurest. It also wins financial services firm Pershing in London's Docklands as a client.
  • January 2009 Digby Trout loses its catering, conferencing and banqueting deal at the historic Maltings in Ely, Cambridgeshire, to Compass Group.
  • January 2009 The Avenance Culinary Team scoops a [gold medal in the La Parade des Chefs ](/articles/325731)competition at the NEC Hospitality show.
  • January 2009 Digby Trout [loses its contract at the Ashmolean museum ](/articles/325490)of art and archaeology in Oxford to Benugo.
  • January 2009 Avenance loses its catering contract at London's Financial Ombudsman Service to Graysons Restaurants.
  • November 2008 Avenance loses its staff feeding contract at Heinz's head office in Hayes, Middlesex to Midlands firm Olive Catering Services.
  • November 2008 Lynn McClelland quits as managing director of Elior's Contracts division after just 13 months in the role and less than a year since Andrew Mortimer resigned as managing director of Integrated Services. Her departure means Elior has potentially two of three managing director roles to fill. Contracts contributed of last year's £280m group turnover.
  • October 2008 Digby Trout Restaurants opens the 60-seat [Time & Space restaurant at the Royal Institution of Great Britain ](/articles/324489)in London.s Mayfair following a £22m refurbishment at the 18th-century building where it runs the café, bar, event catering and public restaurant. Anton Edelmann served as consultant chef on the project.
  • September 2008 Digby Trout loses its decade-long public catering contract at London's Natural History Museum to Benugo but retains the Science Museum (which it loses to Benugo in 2011).
  • September 2008 The Food Standards Agency publishes a six-month progress report on the big five contract caterers' efforts to provide healthier workplace meals, followed by a second update in April 2009.
  • September 2008 Elior UK appoint [Phil Foster from Brakes as finance director ](/articles/323381)and promotes Anne-Marie Morrissey to IT director.
  • August 2008 Elior buys the outstanding 49% in Azure to take full control of the sports, stadia and leisure catering firm whose clients include Glasgow Rangers, Kempton Racecourse and Durham County Cricket Club. Elior bought a majority stake in Azure from Charlotte Ventures in 2004.
  • July 2008 Elior UK [forecasts a £280m turnover in 2008 ](/articles/322456)across its 1,000 contracts. Divisional turnover is: Contracts-£140m, Concessions-£85m, facilities management-£40m-£50m. The company employs more than 12,000 staff.
  • July 2008 Cornwall County Council threatens Elior with legal action after Avenance pulls out of a school meals contract across 171 primary and secondary schools in Cornwall just weeks before it was due to begin from September. It signs up Compass's Scholarest to handle the five-year, £4.5m account which was previously in-house.
  • June 2008 Avenance loses its contract at London advertising agency Engine Group to Harbour & Jones.
  • January 2008 Elior is among five leading caterers who are the first to agree to the - Food Standards Agency's set of commitmentsto reduce salt, sugar and saturated fat levels in workplace meals, which is published in June. A second wave of caterers sign up in July.
  • May 2008 Digby Trout Restaurants appoints [Anton Edelmann as consultant chef ](/articles/321108)while founder Digby Trout moves to a consultancy role.
  • April 2008 Elior wins a three-year catering and vending deal at Glasgow-based services firm Response Intelligent Outsourcing. Over the next three years it aims to double its Scottish business, which includes Scottish Television, Freshlink Foods, Esure Group and Norwich Union (Avenance) and Edinburgh Castle (Digby Trout).
  • April 2008 Elior's new Integrated Services division wins a £3m deal with Norfolk Constabulary across three main locations and 60 police stations.
  • March 2008 Digby Trout Restaurants launches the conference and corporate hospitality facilities at the multimillion-pound AirSpace building at the Imperial War Museum Duxford, in Cambridgeshire.
  • February 2008 Elior [loses its 18-year-long contract at law firm CMS Cameron McKenna ](/articles/319050)in Aldersgate to Harbour & Jones.
  • February 2008 Avenance wins a seven-year catering and hospitality services contract worth an estimated £17m-£21m at 24 of utility company EDF's UK sites. It - losesits luctrative catering contract at news service Bloomberg'sLondon offices in Finsbury Square to Compass Group's Restaurant Associates.
  • Late 2007 Andrew Mortimer quits as managing director of Integrated Services to join FM firm Emcor. Chief executive Mike Audis oversees the operation and in early 2008 promotes John McEwen to managing director of Elior Defence Contracts, the biggest part of the £50m-per-annum division which also includes vending services and the Marks & Spencer contract.
  • December 2007 Elior [loses its catering contract at the Bank of England's ](/articles/317854)Threadneedle Street headquarters and printing works in Loughton, Essex, to Compass Group's Restaurant Associates.
  • November 2007 Elior loses its contract at Wessex Water's Claverton Down headquarters to Holroyd Howe.
  • November 2007 Elior UK [outsources its IT infrastructure and operations ](/articles/317413)to Savvis in a three-year deal.
  • October 2007 The restructure at Elior has resulted in the loss of 66 head office positions across its 6,000-strong workforce.
  • September 2007 Keith Stanley becomes executive chef of Elior's 100-contract London business. Stanley is one of just 13 UK chefs to hold the Master of Culinary Arts title and was head chef at Langan's Bar & Grill in London.
  • August 2007 Elior UK announces [three managing director appointments ](/articles/315559)- Catherine Roe (Concessions), Lynn McClelland (Contract Catering) and Andrew Mortimer (Integrated Services).
  • July 2007 Adam Elliott moves from the role of managing director at Azure to divisional director for Concessions, which includes Azure, Digby Trout, Venue-Elior and the Tesco and House of Fraser accounts.
  • June 2007 Nigel Hutson quits his role as managing director of Digby Trout Restaurants (which turned over £34m last year) after the position was made redundant. Elior refutes claims he turned down the post of divisional director of Concessions. Hutson joins Charlton House in October as managing director of a new division targeting public catering.
  • May 2007 A major shake-up at Elior UK [reorganizes the company into three divisions ](/articles/313498)- the newly-created Elior Integrated Services facilities management business (a £30m business that includes Avenance Defence Contracts); Concessions (travel and retail contracts such as Tesco, Azure, Digby Trout and newly-created venue-finding service Venue-Elior); and Contract Management (Avenance B&I, and the newly-separated education and healthcare businesses). Education turnover has grown by 80% in the past three years to £18m wile healthcare has doubled to £5.3m since 2003. Simon Pollard, managing director of education and healthcare announces his departure.
  • March 2007 Elior signs 11 more primary schools up to its food education programme, MiniGiant, which was piloted last year at St Aubyn's Preparatory School in Essex.
  • March 2007 Elior UK headhunts Sodexho senior executive development chef Peter Joyner, who becomes executive chef for its food concept team. It also creates a food and craft development team headed by executive chef Chris Stanley and a menu and product development team led by executive chef Donald Marshall.
  • January 2007 Avenance Defence Contracts Division scoops a seven-year, £92m (£13m per annum) contract with the Ministry of Defence covering 13 army barracks plus TA and other sites across the south west of England. It will provide catering hotel, leisure and retail services and soft facilities management services such as accommodation cleaning, tailoring, laundry and waste disposal.
  • November 2006 Digby Trout [loses its contract at Newcastle theatre ](/articles/310136)to BaxterStorey.
  • October 2006 Avenance wins a three-year contract to provide catering services at telecommunications company COLT Telecom in north London.
  • September 2006 Avenance makes its first serious move into the state school market by winning an estimated £500,000-worth of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) business in Swindon, Wiltshire involving seven new-build primary, special and secondary school contracts. The move was stimulated by extra government funding in the sector.
  • August 2006 A leaked email reveals what UK chief executive Mike Audis describes as an 'intolerable' failure to hit financial targets, with June operating profit from two-thirds of UK profit centres "significantly adverse to forecast". Elior UK has around 800 contracts and is estimated to turn over about £250m.
  • August 2006 Digby Trout Restaurants wins a seven-year catering contract with St Fagans National History Museum in Cardiff worth £650,000 a year.
  • July 2006 Hayden Groves is named Contract Catering Chef of the Year by the Craft Guild of Chefs. Groves is Avenance executive chef at Lloyd's of London.
  • July 2006 Elior extends its public offer for a further 10 days as majority shareholders must hold at least 95% of the equity before a company can delist from the French stock market. The upshot is that Charterhouse becomes the majority shareholder with 62.3% stake (at a cost of £2.1b (€2.5b), Zolade owns 24.7% and Chequers Capital 7.8%, with the rest owned by the board and key managers.
  • June 2006 Azure opens the 420-seat, three-tier [Panoramic Bar & Restaurant at Kempton Park ](/articles/307783)racecourse in Middlesex. Digby Trout Restaurants scoops a contract worth £6m over five years to cater at the Courtyard and Lakeside Terrace Café at Harewood House in Leeds.
  • June 2006 Following the public offer, Holding Bercy Investissement (HBI) boosts its stake in Elior from 19.34% to 90.54% and increases its voting rights from 20.7% to 90.77%.
  • June 2006 Avenance wins three separate three-year contracts for services to the Council for the Central Laboratory of Research Councils that have a combined annual turnover of £2m-plus. It also scoops a three year contract for Scottish Natural Heritage's new headquarters in Inverness but loses software developer TTP Com in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire to Blue Apple.
  • May 2006 £2b-turnover Groupe Elior and Holding Bercy Investissement (HBI) - the investment vehicle controlled by Elior chief executive Robert Zolade - launch a public offer of €13.40 (£9.25) per share after the European Commission approves the deal. The upshot is that Charterhouse becomes the majority shareholder with 62.3% stake (at a cost of £2.1b (€2.5b), Zolade owns 4.7% and Chequers Capital 7.8%, with the rest owned by the board and key managers.
  • May 2006 Digby Trout Restaurants wins the Restaurants Group category at the inaugural Business Excellence Awards.
  • May 2006 Avenance [scoops three Scottish deals ](/articles/306783)- with the Scottish Court Services in Edinburgh, at Scottish Television in Glasgow, and at Lanarkshire Automobile Group Training Association.
  • April 2006 Avenance [loses its catering contract at the Vantage West building ](/articles/306317)in London's Chiswick to Holroyd Howe.
  • March 2006 Groupe Elior chief executive Robert Zolade [plans to return the company to private ownership ](/articles/305961)because its poor stock market showing fails to reflect its strength and regular growth. Zolade intends to take Elior over through his investment vehicle Holding Bercy Investissement at €13.40 per share with funds from UK private equity firm Charterhouse and Chequers Capital Partners, who will become majority shareholders while Zolade keeps operational control.
  • March 2006 Sports and stadium caterer Azure wins the race-goer feeding, conference and banqueting business at Kempton Park racecourse in Middlesex.
  • February 2006 Elior is nominated as the preferred bidder for the catering contract at Shannon airport, which has one of the few airport-owned catering units in Western Europe.
  • February 2006 Avenance [loses its catering contract at the Cotswold Conference Centre ](/articles/305096)in Worcestershire to Wilson Vale.
  • December 2005 Elior and Italian roadside operator Autogrill (with a £1.4b bid) are the only trade buyers left in in a shortlist of six potential purchasers of Compass's travel concession business SSP. Elior is still in the running by January 2006, but both companies are eliminated from the sale by February.
  • December 2005 Avenance wins its [first two multi-activity Ministry of Defence contracts, worth £71m ](/articles/304005)in combined turnover. It will provide soft facilities management services (including catering, hotel, retail, cleaning, tailoring, waste management and laundry) for for 13,000 army staff across four barracks in the East Midlands and Norfolk and another four barracks in Kent. The two seven-year deals have extension optionsfor a further three years.
  • December 2005 Elior reports a [19.3% jump in pre-tax profits ](/articles/303945)to €140.4m (£94.7m) in the year to 30 September 2005. Turnover grew to €2.83b (£1.94b), up from £1.71b in 2004.
  • November 2005 Elior is among the parties - interested in Compass Group's sale of its SSPtravel concessions business which includes the Moto service stations and chains such as the [Upper Crust and Cafe Ritazza ](/articles/303448)coffee bars in railways stations.
  • October 2005 Avenance loses its staff and hospitality catering deal at the Sheffield site of law firm [Nabarro Nathanson in South Yorkshire ](/articles/303144)to Sodexho executive dining division Directors Table.
  • September 2005 Azure [loses its contracts at Birmingham City football club and Perth racecourse ](/articles/302802)in Scotland to Crown Venue Catering and Sodexho's Prestige Scotland respectively.
  • September 2005 Avenance is preparing a report on the role of nutrition in healing as it plans to enter the NHS market. It intends to pitch itself at an upmarket level which will not involve cutting its costs.
  • August 2005 Avenance wins a new contract to feed 3,500 employees at Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, London. The B+I division has an annual turnover of about £150m and its client list includes Sainsbury's, GlaxoSmithKline, Lloyds of London and Nestlé UK.
  • August 2005 Elior UK has an annual turnover of £238m.
  • June 2005 Tim West resigns as chairman of Avenance UK. He [joins Lexington Catering ](/articles/303180)(set up by former Avenance staff in 2002) as chief executive in January 2006 after buying a 45% stake in the group.
  • June 2005 Dynamic airport markets help boost group first-half pre-tax profits by 16% to €58.1m while sales rose by 6.1%. New contract catering business represented annual sales of about €110m, including wins at Renault in Paris (€9m), Tesco in the UK (€28m)) and the French post office (€4m).
  • March 2005 Avenance UK is [restructured into two divisions ](/articles/300791)- Avenance (B&I) and Specialist Markets (Eliance concessions, Digby Trout, Azure, and education, health and defence)) - under the new Elior UK banner. Timothy Gurney, who joined as managing director of Avenance in January 2004 to oversee the change, steps down in June to return to France.
  • March 2005 After declaring it [will not enter the UK state education market ](/articles/57456)as long as the cost of ingredients remains at just 37p per head, Avenance unveils its [Open Door school meals project ](/articles/67641)based on an ingredient cost of between 55p and 75p per head, 80% fresh food, and some Fairtrade and organic products. The group is unimpressed by the government pledge of 50p-per-headin June, but is ready to target secondary schools where the pledge is for 60p.
  • March 2005 Avenance loses two three-year, £200,000-per-annum contracts to Wilson Vale - at pharmaceutical manufacturer [Rhodia Pharma Solutions ](/articles/57466)in Cramlington, Northumberland and at the head office of retailer Adams Childrenswear in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
  • March 2005 Digby Trout Restaurants expects to complete the [refurbishment of 16-instore restaurants at House of Fraser ](/articles/56896)by the summer and has to date rebranded three sites as Café Zest - at Bluewater, Kent; Lakeside, Essex; and Victoria, London.
  • February 2005 Avenance [loses its contracts ](/articles/57321)at financial company Man Group in the City to Holroyd Howe, and at the UK headquarters of credit management company Atradius in Cardiff to Compass Group.
  • February 2005 Group turnover rose by 6.7% to €699m in Q1 to 31 December 2004. Contract catering turnover rose by 5.6% to €485m. Recent wins include Malvern College and the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle.
  • January 2005 Groupe Elior [boosts its stake in Areas ](/articles/57065)- a concession catering company operating in Spain, Portugal and Latin America - from 60% to 69% and increases Areas' share in airport retailer Dufry to 23.7%.
  • Early 2005 Avenance [adds upmarket patisserie brand Paul**to some of its airport and historic sites and sets up a central bakery to support its London outlets. It opens franchised Puccino's coffee bars at railway stations in Milton Keynes, York and Watford. It's concession business now has 98 contracts but it has exited the MSA business.
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