The Tyne of his life

May 26 2009 by Chris Knox, The Journal

The port on the River Tyne has been at the heart of the region's economy for centuries and is still growing. Christopher Knox meets the new man in charge.

ANDREW Moffat may have been a corporate high-flier for two decades and helped to float telecoms giant Orange not once but twice, but the Port of Tyne’s new chief executive is still a quiet and modest man who hasn’t forgotten his roots in Whitley Bay.

The 53-year-old could have plenty to boast about after years at the forefront of two of the UK’s biggest growth areas, the marketing of bottled water in the 80s and mobile telecoms in the 90s.

He is now seven months into his role at the Port of Tyne and has big plans for the business, including the concreting of Tyne Dock in order to create an extra 5.6 hectares of land to expand the port’s estates business.

However, he didn’t always know how his career would turn out and little did he realise that he would be the top man at the port when he worked there as a teenager as a baggage handler.

He did believe in his abilities at a young age, however, and knew that he wanted to be involved in business at the very top end, which led him to study economics at Newcastle University.

He soon landed a job as trainee accountant at Northumbrian Water in 1979. Moving on to accountancy assistant and finally management accountant in 1985, Moffat then got the chance to front Northumbrian Water spin-off company Aqua Trading Ltd as commercial manager.

The company, which went on to provide water coolers, entered the bottled water market just as it was beginning to take off and kept Moffat busy with a multitude of roles, including ensuring that the water was collected properly from a borehole at Broken Scar in Darlington, helping to run the water treatment plant and marketing the finished product.

“My role was flexible which meant that I pretty much did everything at the company,” says Moffat. “It was very exciting to be involved in what was then a fairly new product. It was a massive risk for Northumbrian Water as a lot of people were sceptical of bottled water at first, but I’m glad they took it as it gave the experience of running a business literally from the ground up.”

It was his experience in accounting as well as his willingness to get his hands dirty which saw him headhunted by Luxembourg-based communications firm Millicom to act as commercial manager in London, where he was responsible for acquiring and dealing with thousands of dealerships around the world.

“I was chuffed to be headhunted by a company, that, just like Aqua, was at the forefront of a rapidly growing market,” he says. “Although having to commute back and forwards to London was a pain, it was important for my career that I grabbed the opportunity. I’m just lucky that I have a very understanding wife.”

His skills were honed on a welter of deals. One of the first big takeovers came with the acquisition of Millicom by Hong Kong firm Hutchison Telecommunications in 1991 as part of the Microtel Communications consortium which also included Pactel Corporation, British Aerospace and French company Matra.

The future suddenly seemed even brighter for Moffat as the huge mobile phone network was renamed Orange and would see his customer base grow from around 70,000 new customers per month to around 300,000.