The international animal feed and agribusiness sector has seen significant movements in terms of career shifts and new hires in the past few weeks. Check out our gallery for all the job news.
DSM has announced that, after 20 years on the managing board and almost 13 years as CEO, Feike Sijbesma has decided to step down from those roles and hand over the company’s leadership, as he looks to pursue other business and personal activities.
He will remain with DSM until May 1, 2020; he is set to announce his new engagements at a later date.
Geraldine Matchett and Dimitri de Vreeze will take on the role of co-CEO’s in February next year, supporting a smooth transition until May 2020, added DSM.
The company said that, in addition to focusing on business performance and financial discipline, under Sijbesma’s leadership, it repositioned itself into a successful science-based company, purpose-led and performance-driven, putting innovation and sustainability at the heart of its strategy.
After a thorough process and external benchmarking, including the advice and input from an international search firm, DSM’s supervisory board said it decided to appoint Matchett and de Vreeze as co-CEO’s, initiating a novel, dual leadership approach.
“This dual leadership structure is rooted in the long history of collaboration between them, which has been keenly observed by the supervisory board and is expected to create a strong basis for continued profitable growth."
In conjunction with the co-CEO role, Matchett will retain her responsibilities as CFO and de Vreeze his COO responsibilities.
The supervisory board of ForFarmers NV has nominated Roeland Tjebbes as a member of the executive board of the Dutch feed group, to be confirmed at the annual general shareholders meeting on April 24, 2020.
Upon his appointment, Tjebbes will hold the position of chief financial officer (CFO) at ForFarmers.
The proposed appointment of Tjebbes follows the decision of Arnout Traas, the current CFO, not to be eligible for reappointment at ForFarmers' AGM in 2020, as previously announced.
Tjebbes is set to join ForFarmers on March 1, 2020. Since October 2015, he has been CFO at dairy trader, Hoogwegt Group. In addition, he has been a member of the supervisory board of Royal Koopmans since May last year.
With a degree in business economics from the University of Maastricht and also a postgraduate degree as chartered accountant from Tilburg University, Tjebbes has acquired broad experience in companies in both the food and feed industries including in Perfetti Van Melle, Nutreco and Vion, reported ForFarmers.
Nutrionist, Dr Aimee Lutz, has joined the Devenish ruminant team in the US.
She will be based out of the Devenish North America corporate office in Fairmont, Minnesota.
Prior to taking on this role, she was manager of ruminant research at ADM Animal Nutrition, where she had been since 2011. There, she directed and conducted feedlot, cow-calf, and rumen fermentation research to support existing and developing products, said Devenish.
She received her BS in Agriculture Science from Illinois State University, and her MS and PhD in ruminant nutrition from the University of Illinois. She worked as a Post-Doc in nutritional physiology at Iowa State University where she gained valuable experience in grant-writing and rumen physiology, said the company.
For eight years, she was a professor of animal nutrition at South Dakota State University with a teaching-research appointment. She taught undergraduate applied and advanced animal nutrition courses as well as a graduate class in vitamins and minerals. Her research focused on maternal nutrition and implications on the developing fetus, among other topics.
Animal nutrition firm, Biomin, has appointed Franz Waxenecker as managing director.
Having obtained a master’s degree in agricultural sciences at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, with research focused on nutrition of monogastric animals, he joined Biomin in 1997 as a specialist in swine nutrition and premix formulation.
He was subsequently appointed chief nutritionist at Biomin in 2000 and he became its director of natural growth promoters in 2003.
Waxenecker implemented the company's first Center of Applied Animal Nutrition (CAN) in 2004 with state-of-the-art equipment for feeding trials, and oversaw the introduction of Biomin CAN facilities worldwide. Most recently, prior to his appointment as managing director, he led the development department at the company.
Skretting has named Robert van den Breemer as its new procurement director, and Jenna Bowyer as category manager, novel ingredients.
Over the past two years, van den Breemer has been working as a business development director at the Skretting global headquarters in Stavanger. Before his time at Skretting, he worked in corporate development at Nutreco in Amersfoort. He also worked for eight years at Roland Berger in Amsterdam as a general strategy consultant. In his new role, he joins the Skretting management team and reports to CEO, Therese Log Bergjord.
“Our goal with procurement for the coming years is to buy smarter and better. Smarter, by both utilzing all the data we have in our possession and by building strong category plans for our major categories. Better, by both working together with the suppliers of our key ingredients to develop improved and novel ingredients and by taking a leading role in sourcing responsibly. Procurement will continue to be a driving force in our mission of feeding the future,” said van den Breemer.
The new position of category manager, novel ingredients will lead procurement activity in the novel sector, including planning, supplier engagement and long-term supplier partnerships, said the fish feed company. A large focus of the role will be to increase future supply of emerging raw materials such as insect and single cell proteins, and to work with suppliers to accelerate raw material innovation and scale-up.
Bowyer has worked in Skretting for seven years, initially in sustainability and communications with Skretting Australia and for the past two and a half years in Stavanger as raw material development project manager.
Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) has announced the appointment of Michael Gelchie as chief operating officer (COO) of the group, with immediate effect, reporting to chief executive officer, Ian McIntosh.
Gelchie will join LDC’s senior leadership team.
A US national, he began his career at LDC in 1990 and worked for the group in different senior trading and management positions in LDC’s sugar, rice and cocoa businesses. He subsequently assisted in the startup of Louis Dreyfus Investment Group in 2008, where he was a senior portfolio manager. He left the group in 2010 to work as head of agricultural trading at Sierentz, and then head of systematic trading at Sucden Americas Corporation. He returned to LDC in July 2019 as head of the coffee platform.
LDC has also appointed Nigel Mamalis as global head of risk and compliance. He has held various senior executive roles since joining the group in 1988.
The IFFO, the international marine ingredients organization, has announced that the incoming president of its management board is Anne-Mette Bæk and the vice president is Gonzalo de Romaña, following elections.
Bæk is the executive director of Marine Ingredients Denmark, representing the Danish fishmeal and fish oil industry. She also heads the international association of the European fishmeal and fish oil producers: EU Fishmeal. She has been a member of the IFFO Board of directors since 2014.
CEO of Peruvian fishmeal and fish oil producer, Tecnológica de Alimentos (TASA), de Romaña has been a member of the IFFO board of directors since 2018.
