Christophe Gaussin was born in Belfort, in northeastern France, in June 1967. He is a CEO of Gaussin Manugistique, company specialised in engineering and wheeled material handling systems.
Education
Christophe Gaussin is a graduate of the Institut de Contrôle de Gestion de Paris and obtained an executive MBA from Concordia University in Montreal in 2005.
Career
Christophe Gaussin joined the family company Gaussin Manugistique in 1992, which was founded by his great-great-grandfather in 1880. During the following two years he got a hands-on education at the family business, gaining an in-depth perspective on the sector and acquiring a savoir-faire in the material handling manufacturing process that the company specialises in. Named General Director of the company in 1994, Christophe Gaussin went on to take the presidency of the Board of Directors one year later, succeeding his father Henri Gaussin. He infused the company with a new vision right from the start by introducing motorised vehicles instead of the “roll-trainers” that his father had built his success on. In order to give the company greater operating flexibility, he took Gaussin Manugistique public in 2006, eventually listing it with Alternext.
Time and time again Christophe Gaussin bet on innovation, positioning the company as thoroughly agile and innovative. In 2006, the company filed nearly 16 patents, and two years later Christophe Gaussin created a new company called EVENT, specialised in research and development. In addition to introducing motorised equipment for warehousing, Christophe Gaussin also reoriented the company toward producing prototypes of hybrid and electric vehicles for heavy loads. Convinced that port operators represented a promising new market, Christophe Gaussin started building next-generation material handling equipment that would bring together efficiency, respect for the environment and worker safety.
Following this new positioning, in 2012 the company released a new range of vehicles under the name ATT (Automative Terminal Trailer) designed for harbour environment, after six years of research. This represented a first step towards warehousing automatisation in this particular environment. The vehicles were especially appealing to port operators because they use environmentally friendly technology, developed in partnership with the CEA (Atomic and Alternative Energy Commission).
Chosen by the major port operator Pelindo through its Indonesian subsidiary, Gaussin delivered 10 docking stations in order to semi-automate Surabaya’s port, the second largest in Indonesia. Thanks to numerous international partnerships, notably in Morocco, Southeast Asia and Indonesia, the company has guaranteed its growth and has become known worldwide.
Anecdotes
As a hands-on leader, Christophe Gaussin has come up with some of his greatest innovations while working in the field. In fact, it was an off-the-cuff drawing done in the port of Dubai that led to a new material handling system that would speed up the unloading of container ships by picking up 4 containers at a time.
