After beginning his career as “a nobody” in the British Army, Kevin O’Sullivan‘s foray into the world of project cargo was a baptism of fire. His first taste of the business was a posting to Dubai, working for Mammoet, the global leader in heavy engineered lifting and transport.

“I’d never seen a P&L in my life. I’d never done sales in my life. Business development – I didn’t even know what that was. So, very quickly you’re learning,” he says.

“Before I’d even unpacked my suitcases, I was already on a plane across to Saudi Arabia as there was a project not far from Al Jubail, an Aramco oil refinery project that they wanted me to go and run as a PM.

“So now I’m in Saudi and it’s 42, 43 degrees on site at seven o’clock in the morning. All this equipment everywhere, I’d never seen a site as big as that Fadhili site. It was unknown to me. There were 30,000 workers at one point.

“The amount of steel work and the organizational planning that goes into a project like that, I’d never seen that before. It was on a bigger scale than most people have seen, and what an insight it was.”

After a successful stint as a general manager in the Middle East, Kevin was in search of a new challenge. Fortunately, an opportunity arose in South Africa, and it was time to move on.

“I’d done some of Africa before but I was just incredibly excited about the opportunity there and it was the complete opposite of Saudi Arabia. I mean, you jump from a very, very conservative country into a place where you can smoke we*d on the streets.”

Kevin had only been working for Mammoet in South Africa for a few months when everything changed. “I’ve been in the chair for like six months and, the idea was that they were going to change their model from having a foothold in each country with the general manager and a full team, and equipment and yards and maintenance and sales and, you know, a lot of overheads and stress.

“Mammoet sort of turned that on the head and said, yeah, but that’s too risky, that’s kind of too expensive. And actually, some of these business units, they’re not making us any money but they’re continually asking for investment. You know, that crane is old or vehicles are needing to be replaced. Perhaps the building we’re in now needs refurbishing.

“They said, Why are we doing it this way? Surely there’s a better way of doing it?”

Mammoet decided to sell its southern Africa operation and Kevin was tasked with finding a buyer but when a first deal broke down, he made his own move for the business.

“Race on six to eight months, the buyer that we did find fell through and, it opened up an opportunity for me and the management team at the time. So after a couple of whiskys one night, we thought, let’s see if the bank will loan us some money and we’ll do it on our own.

“So from this idiot 17-year-old who didn’t have a clue what he was doing to now having an opportunity to borrow a large amount of money from the bank, I just didn’t believe it would happen. This happens to the few and far between. But what an opportunity to land on my desk.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Kevin led a management buyout and, in 2024, Mammoet southern Africa seamlessly transitioned to Tembo HLT (Swahili for elephant).

Kevin tells Project Cargo Professionals, sponsored by VARAMAR, “It’s absolutely exploding, and what a great time to have bought it,” he says. “It’s going really well in the fact that every single piece of equipment is busy.

“There’s lots in mining, there’s lots in renewables, oil and gas. We’ve always said it’ll go to Africa, but we can see some fruit in the pudding now. And it’s quite sexy, actually.”

Project Cargo Professionals is sponsored by VARAMAR