Mike Foureur has worked in senior management roles around the world for more than 20 years, and when talking to him, his decades of hands-on experience shows. However, it’s not just the global management positions that have given him a well-rounded perspective on leadership and management styles, but also the fact that he’s tackled the intricate workings of a broad range of industries from the inside. Mike started out as an apprentice in the newspaper industry, then worked his way up to leadership roles within companies including Linfox, Coates Hire, Fonterra, and Hirepool Ltd before being appointed CEO and Managing Director of Onsite Rental Group in 2014.
Onsite Rental is an equipment rental specialist working in almost every region of Australia.
Having previously worked for Coates Hire and Hirepool, Mike has solid experience in this area, so he saw Onsite Rental as a great opportunity to put his expertise to work in an expanding business. Onsite is a quarter of a century old this year, something Mike says is especially exciting given the levels of growth the company is experiencing.
“Our twenty-fifth birthday is a real milestone for us,” he explains. “During that time, Onsite’s compound annual growth rate has been extraordinary, outstripping most businesses I’ve had anything to do with. So the business is in great shape—it’s a tremendous growth and success story, and we just need to ensure that we can keep that going and tune the business up more towards the current economic conditions to ensure that growth continues.”
The economic conditions have changed immensely since Onsite was established. In recent years, the equipment rental industry had been experiencing unprecedented demand, due in no small part to growth in the resources construction sector and the mining boom. While construction is now decreasing a little, Mike explains, the new installed capacity requires support in terms of production and maintenance, which provides further strong growth opportunities for Onsite to continue being as successful as in the past.
“The business had been enjoying—in fact, industrial services and equipment rental businesses in general had been enjoying—what I would call a purple patch for the last few years off the back of the resources construction spend in Australia,” says Mike. “It’s well documented in most media these days, and that was showing signs of coming off. So what we needed to do was to check that the strategic direction of the business was still appropriate and applicable, and we did that.
