The Times cover story on Rana Harvey

In April 2025, The Times wrote an article that featured one of our CEES ambassadors, Rana Harvey, about her company, Monster Group.

Rana Harvey is the Managing Director and founder of the multi-million-pound retail business, Monster Group. The company is best known for its racking and shelving, but it also sells a wide range of products, including kitchen appliances, radiators, garden furniture, and jukeboxes.

In the article, Rana discusses the challenges she faced during the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum. At the time, one-fifth of Monster's sales were to the EU, and it was "the most profitable part of the business." As a result, Rana and her management team started drafting numerous contingency plans as they waited to see what kind of deal the UK government would negotiate with the EU trading bloc.

Rana and her team opened a warehouse in the Netherlands in the Spring of 2019 as an “insurance policy” in case Britain’s politicians were unable to negotiate a favourable post-Brexit deal with the European Union (EU). 

In the wake of Britain’s hard exit from the single market in January 2021, that warehouse has grown significantly as it continues to serve the European customers of Harvey’s company, Monster Group. Initially comprising just 20,000 sq ft of floor space, the warehouse is now 85,000 sq ft - rivalling that of most football pitches.

Sales to the EU now account for 50% of Monster Group’s turnover, which reached £17.2 million in the year to March 2024, generating a pre-tax profit of £2.3 million.

I wish we didn’t have to do it. I’d love nothing more than bringing it all back to the UK, so we could have just one central warehouse where we can dispatch everything to all over Europe. But that’s not going to happen,” said Harvey, 48. However, Rana still holds a head office in York that employs 90 staff members, and there is a 93,000 sq ft warehouse in Scunthorpe. 

On top of Brexit, Monster also suffered delays when global supply chains fell apart during the pandemic and after the 2021 Suez canal crisis. With more people staying home, the demand for the company's products soared as more people took on home renovation projects. This increase in sales was hard to keep up with but Rana and her team adapted by installing automated systems, which Rana believes has made the company "stronger."

To read more on Rana's Times article, please follow this link