Vanilla Steel appoints John Short as Managing Partner

Steel Veteran to join Vanilla Steel Leadership Team.

Vanilla Steel, European leading marketplace for metals, is pleased to announce the appointment of John Short as Managing Partner to the firm.
John is a dynamic and entrepreneurial senior executive bringing more than three decades of commodity risk & trading management and investment banking success.

John has a long career in steel, building / leading physical back-to-back trading desks at Stemcor and Trafigura, and pioneering steel / ferrous derivatives trading while Global Head of Steel at Standard Bank and NewEdge. John has an MBA from Oxford University.
Alexis Ducros, CEO of Vanilla steel, said “John is bringing a unique wealth of industry expertise, trading track record and market insight. His extensive experience within the physical steel industry combining trading, risk and consultancy will strengthen the leadership team of Vanilla Steel as we are building the digital infrastructure for metals trading across EMEA. John will lead our counterparty activity and structure and scale our execution capabilities.”

Vanilla Steel was launched in 2020 in the midst of the covid-19 pandemia as a digital matchmaking platform designed for the European steel industry and is now expanding into deploying logistics and payment services to its market participants for a seamless procurement experience.

Vanilla Steel is a leading independent platform for industrial materials in EMEA. Our digital matchmaking platform allows steel professionals to connect and trade steel at a fair market price on the secondary market.

Vanilla Steel is your destination for excess and prime metals. We believe sourcing or selling materials online should be simple. We enable buyers to find and buy excess and prime metals directly from European suppliers. Excess material includes overrollings, aged inventory, declassified material or semi-finished products.

The company is headquartered in Berlin – Germany – with 30 employees and is led by its 4 co-founders: Alexis Ducros, Simon Zühlke, Clifford Ondara & Matthias Affeldt who combine 50 years of experience in running digital marketplaces.

Berlin, 18.04.2023