Belgium
Met meer dan 40 jaar ervaring in de vleeswereld durf ik met recht en rede te zeggen dat ik goed ben in mijn vak. Dit is niet enkel beperkt tot 1 deelstuk maar je zou kunnen zeggen van " riek tot vork " omdat ik doorheen mijn gehele loopbaan in het verse vleeswereldje alle stappen heb doornomen , niet alleen commercieel maar ook operationeel en niet enkel vanuit het oogpunt van de leverancier maar ook de laatste 20 jaren vanuit de kant van de distributeur. Ik zou het kunnen samenvatten als een mooie mix van ervaring op technisch en commercieel vlak, aangevuld met de kennis van 5 talen.
Hemelaer is a company with a strong vertical integration in beef , as well BBB as dairy cattle . Through a strong relationship with farmers, a close quality monitoring from the source is assured, next to this Hemelaer has his own brand new and state of the art slaughter-cutting- and packaging plant , able to serve every type of customer meeting the highest quality standards. Briefly summarized , Hemelaer, " Maestro in meat " .
Norenca being part of the Sopraco group is a company that is specialized in processing BBB cattle towards retail by means of technical parts as well as under portion pack, not only beef but also veal , pork and poultry are processed in this company with the focus on retail needs. As account manager , I was accountable for prospecting as well as the follow up on the existing customer portfolio. On the other hand I also took care of the procurement of the raw materials needed for the internal production of Norenca.
Within Metro Group, RTO is the buying division on Meat /Poultry and Game as well fresh as frozen on international level, I'm actually responsible on the buying side for EU Beef and Veal and Horsemeat, on the sales side I'm responsible for Belgium/Spain and France. Before moving to the actual categories , I was handling Lamb/Horse and Goose and Duck, on the sales side I had Austria/France/Belgium/Netherlands and for a while Hungary due to illness of a colleague.
As Trading Office Manager and as this was the second trading office start up in the Metro Group after the one for Fruit & Vegetables, there was a lot of job done on investigations around the build up of a new company within a company . We really started from scratch and had to investigate everything ourselves within the Metro Group and in the meanwhile we also had to start our business of international trade in meat with all countries in the Metro Group. As there was no existing central network of overseas suppliers, also this network had to be developed , set up of a database of eligible suppliers and in order to get RTO to be known towards these suppliers, visits to the 3 most important continents involved, North and South America and Oceania, were organized .
As a Meat Buyer at Makro/Metro Belgium , responsible for the buying of all categories but next to this also promotional planning , assortment building, logistic agreements with suppliers, set up of technical requirement profiles, result follow up of the stores, technical training where needed of new butcher store chefs, set up of the content of promo leaflets together with the Marketing Department. Since 2003 active introduction of new opened Metro stores in the existing Makro BE organization at pro rata of 1 to 2 stores/year.