Management Profiles
Rob Nijst - Chief Executive Officer
Rob Nijst began his career with Van Ommeren in 1992, as a financial trainee at the Vegetable oil terminal in Rotterdam. He was appointed Finance Director in 1995 before moving to Singapore in 1998 as regional controller for Asia Pacific. He then assumed the same role for Vopak, a merger between van Ommeren and Pakhoed. In 2002 he was appointed Vice President Business Development & Account Management for the company’s Asian division. In January 2004 he became CEO of Vopak’s oil terminals in Rotterdam and, in September 2005, President of the Oil Europe & ME division.
Rob Nijst joined Vitol Tank Terminals International on 1st October 2006. He is an economics graduate from Erasmus University Rotterdam, and holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration from IMD Lausanne.
Rubel Yilmaz - Chief Financial Officer
Rubel Yilmaz holds a degree in economics from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. He graduated in 1996 after which he joined Unilever as a management accountant in Unilever Research. He moved to the internal audit department of Unilever in 1998, which he left in 2001 to become the Finance and Logistics manager of Lever Faberge in Vlaardingen. In 2004, Mr. Yilmaz moved to Ireland to take up the role of Finance Director for the Irish Foods Business. In 2006, he returned to Rotterdam to head up the management reporting teams for European business of Unilever. Mr. Yilmaz joined VTTI in November 2007. His first assignment was to lead the change program in Ventspils Nafta Terminals in Latvia. In August 2008 he took the role of Terminal Manager at Amsterdam. Rubel Yilmaz has been appointed to Chief Financial Officer of VTTI as per July 2009.
Eric Arnold - Chief Operating Officer
Eric Arnold started his career in the terminal industry in 1982 as a project engineer for GATX Terminals in Richmond, California. He was promoted to Engineering Manager in 1987, to Operations Manager in 1990 and to Terminal Manager in 1992.
In 1996 Eric completed his MBA, and accepted a position as Terminal Manager for Tankstore in Singapore. In 1998 he was promoted to CEO of the JV between GATX and Petronas in Malaysia, where he led the development of a grass-roots chemical terminal of over 400,000 m3. In 2002 Eric joined Vopak and was posted to Shanghai as CEO of the JV company between Vopak and the Shanghai city Government. There he led the development of another grass-roots terminal project of over 380,000 m3, which was completed in 2006. Eric joined Vitol Tank Terminal International on 6th February 2007.
