The Wolfson Centre for Bulk Solids Handling Technology

New Commercial Director for HAROPA

(Posted on 08/05/19)

Laurent FOLOPPE has been appointed as Commercial and Marketing Director for HAROPA. Within the scope of his new functions, he will propose and implement the sales and marketing strategy to develop HAROPA national and international port trades.

HAROPA, the 5^th largest port complex in Northern Europe, is a joint venture between the ports of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris. It is connected to every continent owing to a first-rate international shipping offer (linking around 700 ports worldwide). It serves a vast hinterland the centre of which is in the Seine valley and the Paris region forming the biggest French consumer market area.

Laurent FOLOPPE will lead the departments under his Managerial Division (marketing, liner shipping, international development, container and ro-ro trades) and has also been entrusted with the interim Management of the Transport Networks Division (rail and river hinterland). He is thus in charge of the promotion and development actions for service supply of the ports of the river Seine corridor to external national and international decision-makers and stakeholders. He will bring his expertise regarding global logistics solutions, project management, innovating and attractive offers, designed to meet HAROPA customers’ requirements (shippers, shipowners, logisticians, freight forwarders) and market trends. Laurent FOLOPPE made the first part of his career within the Transport and Logistics department of Bolloré Group. He especially was the Director for Supply chain Europe business and he managed the subsidiaries of the Group in the Indian Ocean at Reunion and Mayotte islands. Laurent FOLOPPE more recently managed the Bolloré Logistics agency in Le Havre (400 staff) and then the Normandy region for Bolloré Logistics (700 staff). He left the Europe Sales Management of the Group – within which he occupied the post as Director of the Implementation and Solutions Europe Department – to join HAROPA. Owing to his career path, Laurent FOLOPPE has a precise vision of customers’ requirements as regards the supply chain and what is at stake for the growth of the three HAROPA ports. The various functions he had in Normandy from 2015 to 2018 provided opportunities for close partnerships with HAROPA, especially in the field of logistics on the PLPN2, but also of multimodality within the scope of the start, in 2018, at the Trimodal Terminal in Le Havre, of the river service to Bonneuil operated by Bolloré Logistics.

“Le Havre, Rouen and Paris are high-performance infrastructures, he said; we now have to carry on extending the logistics scheme as a whole, strengthen the hinterland as regards rail

and river, so that HAROPA may turn into THE gateway to Europe.”

Laurent FOLOPPE says he is ready to “help HAROPA customers with green-performing logics” and take up the challenges of the leading French port system, especially within the scope of the prefiguration in progress.