You are Cristina Sanromán-Etcheberry, 47, COO of Aceros Cantábricos, a Basque industrial-services group based in Bilbao with operations across northern Spain and a small but growing footprint in southern France. The CEO has asked you to propose what shape the firm should take as it crosses €400M. The current shape is breaking.
The situation
Aceros Cantábricos provides three industrial services: industrial-cleaning & maintenance (47% of revenue), on-site engineering services (33%), and heavy-equipment rental (20%). Revenue €398M, 1,820 employees, 28 hub yards across Cantabria, País Vasco, Navarra, Asturias and Aragón, with a 41-person team in Bordeaux serving cross-border ArcelorMittal accounts. Margins steady at ~9% EBITDA. The firm grew from €110M to €398M in 8 years via organic growth plus three small bolt-on acquisitions (two engineering specialists, one cross-border maintenance shop).
Today's structure is functional: one VP Operations, one VP Sales, one VP Engineering, one VP Finance & HR, all reporting to the CEO; the three service lines do not have dedicated leaders. Three things are now broken. Sales can't credibly cross-sell — the technician who knows ArcelorMittal's furnace cleanup doesn't know whether to lead with engineering or rental. The August fiasco at the Sestao foundry — €1.2M over budget — happened because no one owned the cross-line solution. And the firm has lost two senior service-line leaders to competitors who offered them P&Ls.