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Marc Zwaaneveld, CO-CEO of Greenyard "We're not there yet, but we're well on our way"
Marc Zwaaneveld, Co-CEO of Greenyard:
“We’re not there yet, but we’re well on our way”
On the day of this interview, Greenyard announced its new partnership with the German retailer REWE Group. Greenyard co-CEO, Marc Zwaaneveld, who was appointed this year, doesn’t sugarcoat the company’s financial situation but he sees plenty of perspectives for the future. “We made mistakes, but the fact is that in Greenyard’s worst year ever, first Carrefour, then Delhaize, and now REWE Group have signed agreements with us. This shows that we are the perfect company to introduce this revolutionary model to the market. It’s easy to say we grew too quickly but without this expansion we would not have been able to make these deals. I don’t believe we grew too fast we just should have structured the expansion better.”
You stepped in as Greenyard’s co-CEO in February. How did you get settled into the sector, and what has drawn your attention since the start of your assignment?
When joining Greenyard, knowing the situation, you settle in very quickly, let me tell you. The industry was completely new for me, so I learned new things every day. The advantage of being an outsider is that you join the company with a very open-mind. In the beginning, I used my time to understand how the business works as to form my own opinion. I was very surprised by some practices. Daily informal trade is still based on ‘who knows who,’ and I was astonished to learn that often contracts aren’t even used. I am not saying this doesn’t work for this sector, but personally, I think it can be improved. Above all else, I find this an incredible sector. We deal with natural products and healthy produce, which has a strong societal importance. In that sense, it’s similar to my previous job at the waste processing company Van Gansewinkel. There, we also dealt with recycling, reusing and the circular economy. In other words, the ‘waste does not exist’ principle. We are truly working for the future, and I expect that the social relevance of this work will only continue to increase.
You were appointed co-CEO. Doesn’t having two captains on one ship complicate things?
It’s not a very common construction. If you had told me beforehand, I would have found it unusual too. It might also not be entirely my style. But I can say without any doubt that in this specific situation it works well. Incidentally, there is also a large Dutch construction firm that operates using this ‘two sets of eyes’ principle. This construction can only work if you respect each other, and I have the utmost respect for the company that Hein Deprez has built from scratch, for over 35 years, into this extraordinary enterprise. I can learn so much from Hein about the market and the industry. Of course, I could never learn as much as he did in more than 35 years, but his knowledge helps me a lot. I bring my own expertise too, of course. We each do our own thing.
But what are these own things? How do you divide the tasks?
Look at it this way: I’m in charge of the day-to-day management which covers everything. Hein maintains relations with clients and large growers. We coordinate a lot among ourselves, also in cooperation with the CFO, Geert Peeters, and the Leadership Team. We have no issue consulting each other. The division of roles doesn’t need to follow any strict rules or lines, it just happens naturally.
You have more experience with companies that need reorganization. Do you see yourself as a kind of intermediary?
I have never seen myself as an intermediary!
The Deprez family lives and breathes the company but I do too, in my own way. That is the only way I can be successful, and that it what suits me best. You either give it your all, or you give it nothing. Some people think it is interesting to say they are an interim-manager but I don’t believe in that. People in long-term positions also go on to new jobs. I don’t consider myself a crisis manager. Even if I were to enter a financially-stable company, I would work to improve it. Here, the urgency is just a bit bigger. But you shouldn’t make things seem more dire than they are. At a certain point it becomes clear that things aren’t going well. This requires changes to be made and issues to be solved, which makes for a lot of work. If I hadn’t seen the light at the end of the tunnel, I wouldn’t have started here. This is a company with a vast amount of knowledge and experience and the fact that things did not always go well in the past gives me room to do these things right.
What did you learn when you arrived at Greenyard? You were, after all, not approached for no reason.
We had our first discussion around Christmas of last year. At that time, the management team felt the urgency of things going wrong. By the way, I ended up here at the management team’s request; not as a requirement from the banks, as has been suggested in the media. I have experience in similar situations and wanted to see what I could do. What I found was an incredibly committed management team with an enormous perspective on the market. They had achieved a great deal. But I also quickly noticed that they did not spend nearly enough time running the business. Consolidating, integrating, securing, building new structures, and expanding further - not enough of this was being done. If they had spent too much time on this, however, the business wouldn’t have been able to grow like it did. People are quick to judge...
Read the entire article in the Primeur Fruit Attraction edition 2019
