Latest news with #Vos
Daily Maverick
27-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
South Africa's Supply Chain Digital Revolution: Who's Leading the Charge?
AI, cybersecurity, and advanced analytics are no longer optional extras—they are reshaping the very fabric of global supply chains. As digital transformation accelerates worldwide, South African businesses are increasingly stepping up to lead this shift. Johannesburg, 21 May 2025 – According to KPMG's 2024 Global Supply Chain Trends report, 71% of organisations are prioritising digital transformation to drive agility and resilience, with AI, advanced analytics, and cloud technologies topping the investment agenda. The report highlights a clear shift from reactive supply chain strategies to predictive and proactive models, powered by real-time data and machine learning. PwC's Digital Supply Chain Survey reinforces this, revealing that digitally mature supply chains are six times more likely to experience revenue growth and profitability than their less advanced counterparts. These leaders are using AI to refine forecasting accuracy, cloud-based platforms to enhance end-to-end visibility, and smart systems to track sustainability metrics across procurement. Meanwhile, SecurityBrief Asia's 2025 trends forecast points to a sharp rise in supply chain cyberattacks, prompting a surge in investment toward cybersecurity, encrypted data exchange, and secure-by-design infrastructure. Without strong cyber defences, the promise of digital procurement can be swiftly undermined—making resilience just as important as innovation. In South Africa, the digital momentum is gaining pace. 'We're in a period of accelerated digital exploration,' says Paul Vos, Regional Managing Director of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) Southern Africa—the world's largest professional body serving procurement and supply professionals. 'Many organisations are moving from tactical automation to more strategic, integrated procurement practices. While not every sector is moving at the same speed, the pressure to modernise is mounting—driven by rising customer expectations, global competitiveness, and the need for supply chain transparency and resilience.' Retail giants like Woolworths, Checkers, and Massmart are at the forefront, deploying AI for omnichannel stock management, RFID-enabled inventory tracking, and predictive replenishment systems. In the financial and telecoms sectors, organisations such as FirstRand and MTN are embracing advanced sourcing models and AI-driven data platforms to enhance procurement performance and broader business value. Even in more traditional sectors, procurement teams are experimenting with chatbots, warehouse automation, and digital contract management—evidence that a quiet but determined transformation is underway. Yet, despite growing enthusiasm, the path to digital maturity isn't without obstacles. Vos identifies three key challenges facing procurement teams: Legacy Systems – Outdated technologies often don't integrate easily with new platforms, slowing adoption and innovation. Skills Gaps – Procurement teams sometimes lack the digital literacy and change management expertise needed to lead transformation. Cultural Resistance – In many organisations, procurement is still viewed as a transactional back-office function rather than a driver of strategic value. 'Budgetary constraints and uncertainty around return on investment are also major concerns,' says Vos. 'But once organisations see results from a successful project, confidence tends to grow rapidly.' To support this transition, CIPS is playing a pivotal role. Through globally benchmarked qualifications, upskilling programmes, executive briefings, and thought leadership, CIPS is helping procurement professionals and teams acquire digital fluency. 'We're not just digitising procurement—we're reimagining it,' Vos adds. 'We want professionals to lead transformation, not just survive it.' Another pressing concern is talent. Is the current pipeline of professionals equipped to meet the demands of a digital procurement future? 'The short answer is: not yet,' says Vos. 'We're seeing growing awareness, and professionals are starting to upskill—but the pace of technological change is relentless.' CIPS is addressing this by embedding digital capabilities such as data interpretation, AI literacy, and strategic sourcing into its qualifications. 'It's going to take a collaborative effort—from academia, professional bodies, and industry—to close the gap and ensure a resilient, future-ready workforce,' he notes. Looking forward, procurement in South Africa is set to become more data-driven, ethical, and interconnected. Several trends are converging to define the future: Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics – To anticipate supply disruptions and drive smarter decision-making. Sustainable and Ethical Procurement – ESG considerations are becoming non-negotiable, and digital tools are crucial for compliance. Integrated Digital Ecosystems – Fragmented systems are giving way to unified platforms with end-to-end visibility. But the most profound shift may be in the role of the procurement professional. 'Tomorrow's procurement leader will be tech-savvy, strategic, and deeply embedded in cross-functional value creation,' says Vos. 'We're witnessing the rise of a new procurement paradigm—one that sees technology not as a threat, but as a transformative ally.' As global and local trends converge, South Africa has both the ambition and the capability to lead the continent's supply chain revolution. DM
Eyewitness News
12-05-2025
- Business
- Eyewitness News
Plan to use properties owned by City of Cape Town for homeless project
Non-profit organisation Streetscapes is raising funds in the hope of buying seven housing units from the City of Cape Town, with plans to convert them into homes for previously homeless people. James Vos, the City's mayco member for economic growth, said six of the units are vacant, and three are still tenanted. He said the units were initially acquired because of plans to widen roads decades ago. Those plans have since been scrapped, and the city no longer needs them. Vos said a sale of these properties would require council's approval, and a public participation process. The sale could be subject to a clause in the City's Immovable Property policy, limiting the use of the property to social care. 'The policy provides for social care properties to be sold at a purchase price of between 10% to 25% of fair market value,' Vos said. For the past decade, Streetscapes has worked to end homelessness by supporting people with jobs and houses. Their model aims to get people work. The organisation currently supports 150 formerly homeless people, through work, housing and other support. In its peer-to-peer programmes, people who were previously homeless or struggled with addiction are trained to support others in similar situations. At Streetscapes, 'peers' offer guidance and help clients with medication, housing and daily challenges. Jesse Laitinen, Streetscapes' founder and manager, said the new houses would be offered to peer counsellors and people who had been through the first stage of their programme and were now ready to find work and a home. They would be able to live with their families, close to the city, and pay affordable rent. The discounted value of the properties would be R2.5 million. Streetscapes is trying to raise R250,000 through a crowdfunding campaign and is approaching businesses to fund the rest. 'What we want to do is create a home in each of the units so that they won't be a dorm or an institution,' Laitinen said. Securing the properties would allow Streetscapes to scale up its reintegration programme for previously homeless people. One beneficiary of that programme is Sandile Mhlongo, a former soccer player who came to Cape Town from Durban in 2002. After ending up on the streets in 2005, he moved through various shelters and programmes before finding stability with Streetscapes. He began by cleaning streets in Woodstock, then moved into one of the Streetscapes houses. 'When you're part of the programme, they aim to put you in the house to uplift yourself,' Mhlongo said. 'Housing means a lot to us because some of us never had housing before.' Mhlongo now works as a peer supervisor. 'We give people medication. If they need shelter or if they have issues, they can't deal with alone, we intervene as peers to try to put them back on track.' Another peer worker, Dolan Davis, spent two decades on the streets before joining Streetscapes in 2021. He began working in gardens and later moved to the organisation's Kuils River farm. 'I started setting goals for myself and changed my whole mentality,' Davis said. Thabo Koti from Kraaifontein said Streetscapes had helped him recover from addiction and trauma. 'They were the first organisation that actually walked the journey with me into recovery.' The most beneficial thing about Streetscapes housing is that it restores your dignity. You forget what home is.' He currently works in a Streetscapes garden in Trafalgar and is a house co-ordinator at Chester House, one of Streetscapes' properties. 'Getting those seven units would mean they'd be able to assist more people, give them hope and give them a sense of belonging and worth,' Koti said. Jonathan Manuel from Delft was homeless at just nine-years-old after his mother died in 1995. 'I was on the streets my entire life and didn't know what it meant to sleep in a house,' he said. After getting his ID through Streetscapes, he was offered housing and work at the organisation. 'Now that Streetscapes placed me in Chester House, I feel like I'm part of a family and I feel the warmth.' The new site could also be a model for green development. 'We started experimenting with this beautiful painted container, which is a laundromat. It works completely off the grid,' said Laitinen. Streetscapes plans to replicate the solar- and rainwater-powered laundromat and showers should they get the new property. To fund construction and upgrades, Laitinen said Streetscapes is approaching solar and construction companies for cost-effective partnerships. Asked whether there was a timeframe for the public participation process, the city said it did not have one yet as it is 'still dependent on several factors'. 'The city's Property Transactions Department is undertaking technical investigations, whereafter the public participation process will commence,' the city said. It emphasised that no final decision on a sale has been taken, and that the proposal remains under assessment ahead of the public participation phase. While the programme's immediate impact might seem small, Laitinen believes its symbolic value is much greater. 'If you have 100 people off the streets in one month, that's a drop in the ocean. But it creates hope and changes the system. This is also symbolic of how we all pull together: the state gives what it has, the NGOs give what they have, and corporates come together. 'To me, it's the model for how we can do things differently, and that is hugely exciting,' Laitinen said. This article first appeared on GroundUp. Read the original article here.
New York Post
02-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Prince Harry loses final bid for taxpayer-funded UK security
Prince Harry has lost his appeal against the UK government over taxpayer-funded security. During a two-day hearing at a London court last month, the Duke of Sussex, 40, claimed he had been singled out for 'unjustified and inferior treatment' when he and his family were stripped of publicly funded security detail. On Friday, Sir Geoffrey Vos, Lord Justice David Bean and Lord Justice Andrew Edis announced the ruling — which comes as a huge blow to the 'Spare' author and his wife, Meghan Markle, who has refused to return to the UK following the late Queen Elizabeth II's funeral in September 2022. 4 Britain's Prince Harry walks to attend court for his appeal. He lost his appeal against the UK government. REUTERS 4 Prince Harry leaving court on April 9, 2025. REUTERS The appeal was widely considered to be Harry's final shot at winning back the security detail. It is not yet known whether the Invictus Games founder will be allowed to apply for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court following the ruling. Delivering the ruling, Judge Vos noted that while Harry's arguments were 'powerful and moving,' he 'could not say that the duke's sense of grievance translated into a legal argument for the challenge to' the Royal and VIP Executive Committee's (RAVEC) decision. 'The conclusion, in my judgement, with which my colleagues Lord Justice Bean and Lord Justice Edith agreed, was that the Duke of Sussex's appeal would be dismissed,' he added. The Home Office, which has ultimate legal authority over RAVEC, rejected Harry's appeal. Its legal team asserted that the decision was made in an exceptional context and that there were no valid grounds to contest it. 'The duke was in effect stepping in and out of the cohort of protection provided by Ravec,' Judge Vos said while reading a summary of the court's decision Friday. 'Outside the UK, he was outside the cohort, but when in the UK, his security would be considered as appropriate.' 'It was impossible to say that this reasoning was illogical or inappropriate, indeed it seemed sensible,' he said, adding that the decision was 'understandable and perhaps predictable.' The Post has reached out to Harry's reps for comment. During his April court hearing, Harry complained about not feeling safe enough to return to his home soil with his wife and their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, because 'it is too dangerous.' 4 (Left to right) Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex on September 10, 2022. POOL/AFP via Getty Images The duke's lawyers added that the UK's treatment of him was 'unlawful and unfair,' and warned of 'the impact on the UK's reputation of a successful attack' against him. Harry's legal team also mentioned the duke's failed bid to hire armed bodyguards from London's Metropolitan Police on his own dime — a request that was refused last year. In February 2024, London's High Court ruled to strip the Sussexes of taxpayer-funded UK security protection. 4 Prince harry departs from court on April 9, 2025. REUTERS The father of two — who lives in Montecito, California, with his family — was ordered to pay 90% of the UK Home Office's legal costs for defending the court's initial ruling. Sir Peter Lane, the judge of the High Court, ruled that there was no unlawfulness in stripping the Sussexes of their security in February 2020 following their shocking departure from royal life the month prior. Following the ruling, Harry has made it his mission to win the security detail back for him and his family — but has notably received zero help from the royals.
New York Times
02-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Prince Harry Loses Latest Court Battle Over His Security in the U.K.
Prince Harry has lost the latest round of his legal battle against the British government over his publicly funded security when he is in Britain. He has been fighting a decision to remove the automatic police protection that is normally given to members of the royal family. It was removed in 2020 after he stepped down from his official role and left the country. Harry lost the previous stage of the case in February last year, but challenged that ruling at the Court of Appeal, which gave its judgment on Friday. Geoffrey Vos, one of the three Court of Appeal judges who dismissed Harry's case, told the hearing that a 'bespoke' process adopted after he moved to California, that allows British officials to make decisions on his U.K. visits on a case-by-case basis, was lawful. He said the move away from Harry's automatic protection was 'an understandable and perhaps predictable reaction to the Duke of Sussex having stepped back from royal duties and left the U.K.' At a two-day hearing last month, Harry's barristers said in court that he had been left with 'inferior treatment' that put his safety and that of his wife, Meghan, and their two children at risk. And they argued that the decision to withdraw the normal level of protection for royals was unlawful and violated official policy. The decision was made by a body called the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known as Ravec, which brings together government officials, the police and members of the royal household. Harry began his legal challenge in September 2021 and the first stage heard that he had offered to 'reimburse or proactively finance the cost of the security measures' himself, but Ravec decided that the move would be wrong 'in principle.' The committee was said to be concerned that permitting private payment would 'reduce the availability' of a limited pool of close protection officers in Britain where police do not routinely carry guns and undergo intensive specialist training for the role. Harry lost a legal challenge on the funding decision in 2023, and a High Court judge dismissed his case on wider grounds in February 2024. He was granted permission to appeal three months later, but only on legal points concerning whether the committee had violated its own policy on how to decide which individuals should receive protection. As he gave the Court of Appeal's ruling on Friday, Judge Vos agreed that its policy was not followed but said that was for 'good reason,' and in accordance with risk assessments and expertise on royal protection. The committee had considered Harry's security 'as appropriate depending on the circumstances' of his visits to Britain, the judge said, adding: 'It was impossible to say that this reasoning was illogical or inappropriate. Indeed, it seemed sensible.' Judge Vos acknowledged that Harry feared for his family's safety and 'felt badly treated by the system,' but he said that did not make the committee's decisions unlawful. Court of Appeal rulings can be fought at Britain's Supreme Court, but permission must be granted by judges and Harry's legal team have not yet said whether they will seek it. While the case has been ongoing, Harry has visited Britain on several occasions, including for the funeral of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and for the coronation of his father, King Charles III. The High Court heard that each visit had triggered applications to the committee for public protection, which are now considered for Harry on a case-by-case basis, and involved the use of private security. Harry is fighting a separate case at the High Court against the publisher of the British newspaper Daily Mail, alongside a group of celebrities and high-profile individuals who accuse it of unlawfully obtaining information on their personal lives. A two-day hearing on that case is set to take place next week.
Forbes
13-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why This Dutch Billionaire Could Benefit From US-China Trade War
Weeks before President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on more than 80 countries around the world—including 20% on the European Union—Dutch real estate billionaire Remon Vos was sanguine about the impact a coming trade war would have on CTP, his publicly traded industrial real estate firm that's the largest player in central and eastern Europe. 'Asian companies like to be located in Europe to avoid import tariffs. I think that's good,' he said in an earnings call on February 27, pointing to the growing roster of east Asian clients flocking to CTP's industrial parks to make goods for the European market. 'For us, there's a benefit.' Andrejs Zavadskis for Forbes CTP took a hit from the stock market rout unleashed by Trump's tariffs, with its stock falling 12% between the announcement on April 2 and the day tariffs came into effect a week later. Still, CTP fared better than many of its competitors. (Trump delayed the higher tariffs for 90 days on April 9, except for a 10% global tariff on all countries, sending it back up 4%.) Vos, who owns 73% of the shares, is worth an estimated $6 billion, making him a newcomer to Forbes' 2025 World's Billionaires list. CTP has a dominant position across 10 countries in central and eastern Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic and Romania, where land and labor costs are lower than countries further west and where markets are less exposed to the U.S. economy. That means it's likely to benefit from tariffs in the long term. If countries around the world start imposing higher duties, companies who want to sell to Europe will have to build their factories there to avoid them—and CTP is in the driver's seat to win their business. More than 10% of its properties are already leased to Asian companies manufacturing for the European market—including Japanese conglomerate Hitachi and South Korean automaker Hyundai—and 20% of new leases signed in 2024 were from Asian clients. Vos, 54, is constantly on the move seeking new deals. On a Monday afternoon, he found an hour to sit down with Forbes. Every other day of the workweek, he's traveling on a private jet to different corners of eastern Europe, but on Mondays he works from CTP's headquarters in Prague, housed in a futuristic, glass-covered building that stands out from the Habsburg-era architecture surrounding it. 'I don't have an office here, this is a meeting room. Tonight I'll fly to Romania. I'm going to Asia next week. That's how it works,' he says, dressed in his usual outfit of a white shirt, dark tie and round rimmed black glasses, with his blond hair combed to the side. 'I go to the countries and go with my colleagues to look at projects and land. Don't talk to me about IT or HR. Talk to me about deals.' Vos has been criss-crossing the former Eastern bloc and cutting real estate deals for nearly three decades. Since cofounding CTP in Prague in 1998, he's grown it into the second-largest industrial and logistics real estate developer in Europe. It now owns more than 143 million square feet of industrial parks and warehouses leased to blue-chip tenants including delivery firm DHL, clothing retailer H&M, automaker Renault and healthcare diagnostics firm Thermo Fisher Scientific. Plus it owns more than 284 million square feet of land—more than any of its competitors—most of it already zoned and permitted, located adjacent to existing properties so CTP can quickly expand when its clients need more space. The firm, which listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange in 2021, recorded $614 million EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) on $900 million revenues in 2024. That was up 29% and 17%, respectively, over the previous year, thanks to growing rental income at its properties. Vos built CTP through a relentless focus on expansion, taking advantage of cheaper labor and land costs first in the Czech Republic and then throughout the region as those countries joined the European Union—a key advantage for multinationals seeking to ship products to western Europe. As the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a wave of near-shoring—where companies move production closer to the final destination of their products—CTP has been one of the biggest winners, gaining customers as far afield as China and the U.S. Since the beginning, Vos, who owned 100% of the firm before it went public after buying out his late cofounder's shares in 2019, has long run the company as a hard-charging startup in the sedate world of commercial real estate. 'Remon is the battery of the company, he's the drumbeat. He recruits people who are dealmakers, who have the same work ethic,' says Wim Levi, an analyst at Belgian financial services firm KBC Securities. 'I compare it to Navy SEALs. It's almost like an army.' One of CTP's newest customers is Regensburg, Germany-based auto parts supplier Vitesco Technologies, which spent $200 million to build an electric vehicle components factory at a CTP industrial park in the Czech city of Ostrava last year. 'He's like a nuclear plant when it comes to his energy,' adds Peter Ceresnik, CTP's chief operating officer. 'It brings a lot of value but it also brings a lot of stress to work with him, because you need to be at your best to keep up the pace.' Vos doesn't plan on slowing down. Last year, CTP borrowed $2.6 billion between taking out loans and issuing bonds, and raised $330 million in a new share offering, helping it finance the purchase of industrial parks and land in Romania and Germany. The firm's ambitious target is to hit $1.1 billion in rental income by 2027, up from $770 million last year. And it's still building, with more than 19 million square feet of projects under construction across nine countries. 'We still think there are good opportunities in the region,' says Vos. 'If you have cash in hand, you can attack and do a deal quickly.' Not bad for a high school graduate who left the Netherlands to sell dairy products in the Czech Republic in his early 20s, just after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Born in the small town of Stadskanaal in the northeastern Netherlands to a student mother and a father who traded cars, Vos moved between nearby towns as a child after his parents divorced when he was six years old. By age 12 he started working, washing cars and cleaning at a hair salon on weekends. 'So I could afford to buy a beer and cigarettes,' he says, deadpan. When he was in his last year of high school in 1988, his school planned a trip to what was then called Czechoslovakia. Vos signed up and paid for the bus ticket, but he missed a presentation on the trip a week before. 'I didn't go to school a lot,' he says. 'I did ask a friend to tell me what it was about, so he gave me the departure time. I arrived at the bus station that day, a Sunday evening in October 1988, but I found out my bus had already left.' That missed trip sparked an enduring fascination with Czechoslovakia. After graduating, Vos worked with his father selling car phones. In 1990, he met a friend of his father's, Johan Brakema, who had been married to a Czechoslovakian woman and traveled there to visit her family after she died and brought them food, clothes and appliances. Vos asked to go along with him on his next trip, and he made his first journey in 1991. 'We saw the whole country and it was very impressive because there were [few paved] roads,' he recalls. 'It was autumn and it was all misty and dark and gray. But I also thought, 'wow, there are great opportunities here because there is nothing.'' Vos and Brakema started a small company exporting Dutch products to the Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia split into two countries in 1992), until one of their Dutch clients approached them about setting up a steel parts factory in the Czech Republic. They took that on and Vos moved from the Netherlands with his wife in 1995. But they couldn't find a building for the factory—or a developer to build one for them. 'We thought, 'Is it just us looking for property? Or are there other companies who have the same demand and there's no supply?'' Vos recalls. 'So we looked at [building] a business park, and then that company from Holland could be the first tenant and we could find other tenants. And that's what happened.' They found a plot of land in Humpolec, a small town in the central Czech Republic and brought in a third partner, a Dutch lawyer and businessman named Eddy Maas, to build their first industrial park there in 1998. They named their new company CTP, for Central Trade Park, with each partner owning a third of the shares. 'Johan had the money, Eddy the brains, and I had the energy,' says Vos. CTP's 6.9 million square foot industrial park in Bor, near the Czech-German border, is the second-largest in its portfolio and hosts firms including tiremaker Bridgestone and fashion retailer Primark—and there's still room to grow. "We have so much land we can build for many, many years to come," says Vos. After a couple of rough years where they lost money selling a building and a client went bust, things started to turn around in 2002. Brakema sold his shares for an undisclosed amount and Vos and Maas kept going. By 2007 CTP had become the largest industrial developer in the Czech Republic, with 22 logistics parks around the country. Vos also learned a lesson from those early years that he's always tried to heed: 'Never sell,' he says. 'If you build a park, the idea is to continuously build so it doesn't make sense to sell it.' When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Vos looked to convince customers to come to CTP's properties because they were cheaper and newer than their existing sites in western European countries. 'They had production facilities in Holland, Germany or France, with expensive labor and outdated facilities,' he says. 'This was the moment to bring business to central Europe.' CTP's rental income grew nearly 8% each year between 2008 and 2011, outpacing its peers. That growth allowed Vos to expand into Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. Then in 2016, Maas died, leaving Vos alone at the helm. When Maas' children agreed to sell their 50% stake in the company to Vos in 2019, he had to take out an estimated $760 million loan and break one of his cardinal rules, selling a portfolio of three industrial parks for $466 million in 2018 to help finance the purchase. 'I believe very much that change is opportunity. You need to be very reactive, keep your eye on the ball and focus.' When Vos decided to take CTP public in 2021, it was the largest real estate IPO in Europe in seven years. The listing raised $1 billion and Vos sold an additional $112 million worth of shares, using the proceeds to pay back part of the loan. (The loan was fully paid off in 2023). Flush with cash, CTP bought a German industrial portfolio for $786 million and picked up nearly 26 million square feet of land in Poland in 2022, as well as expanding in Austria, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Serbia. Over his nearly three decades in the industry, Vos has learned how to turn crises into opportunities: the 2008 financial crash, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine, to name a few, all of which CTP survived and took advantage of to buy land for cheap and win new tenants. 'I believe very much that change is opportunity,' he says. 'You need to be very reactive, keep your eye on the ball and focus.' CTP isn't the only firm cashing in on the boom in eastern European industrial real estate: American giants Prologis and privately-held Panattoni Development both have large portfolios in the area, as does former Belgian billionaire Jan Van Geet's publicly traded VGP. 'Their private jets race against each other in Europe to pitch deals,' says Levi of the competition between Vos and Van Geet. But CTP is the largest in the region, and what sets it apart from its competitors is its speed—developing new projects when they're only 30% to 40% pre-leased compared to rivals who typically wait until they are nearly 100% leased before starting construction. Because CTP develops its own properties, it can also build faster to meet its clients' needs. 'They have land adjacent to where they already have tenants next door, so it's not as risky as just doing it in the middle of nowhere,' says Steven Boumans, an analyst at Paris-based financial services firm ODDO BHF. So far, that strategy has worked. In 2024, CTP planned to build 14 million square feet of new developments and had only leased 38% of that space at the beginning of the year; once construction was complete, they were 92% leased. And even as the firm grows, it makes sure that its customer base is diversified: no tenant makes up more than 2.2% of total leases, and CTP isn't overly reliant on any one industry, with logistics and manufacturing companies accounting for 28% and 26%, respectively, of its total space. Still, CTP could be vulnerable if one of its most important industries is hard-hit. Automakers, which make up 21% of the company's total leases, have been facing a slowdown in sales in Europe—and may be further hit by President Donald Trump's 25% tariff on imports of cars and car parts into the U.S. 'It's a large part of their business and if the automotive industry doesn't rebound, they could be impacted,' says Pierre-Emmanuel Clouard, an analyst at Jefferies. And because of Vos' record of breakneck growth—CTP's rental income has grown an average 16% per year since 2019—he needs to keep up the pace to keep investors on his side. 'It's a growth story, they have to launch new projects and get new tenants,' he adds. Vos has a solution for that, too: landing more clients in Asia and taking advantage of the boom in defense spending in Europe. 'In Germany, we see defense businesses asking for space,' he says, also pointing to more investment in semiconductor manufacturing and clean tech. 'For Asian companies in the automotive industry, if they want to supply Volkswagen or BMW, they need to be within a one-day drive of their facilities,' he says. 'They will have to set up shop here." Trump paused his additional tariffs on the European Union on April 9 for 90 days, but even a tariff war won't deter Vos. 'Recent events will lead to more production in central and eastern Europe, which is good for CTP,' says ODDO BHF's Boumans. Vos also knows how to keep clients, with 87% of CTP's customers re-signing after the end of their leases—higher than its publicly traded peers. At some of its industrial parks, CTP has built housing for workers as well as clubhouses with restaurants, convenience stores, sports facilities and medical clinics. 'Over two-thirds of our new leases are signed with existing tenants,' says Richard Wilkinson, CTP's chief financial officer. One thing that won't change: Vos remains a micro-manager, overseeing hiring decisions and personally checking out new markets. 'I'm not a guy who sits in a big office to rule an empire,' he says, laughing. 'I would rather be on the ground.'
