IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Taste Tomorrow, every day Puratos has been guiding its strategy in line with the findings of its ‘Taste Tomorrow’ study, an extensive consumer research program undertaken every two years. It is now regularly updated as findings guide decisions to fast-paced consumer changes, the company’s new CEO, Pierre Tossut, shared with us.
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Catalina Mihu: Congratulations on your new role. Please share your thoughts on taking on the CEO role at the beginning of a new year in an unprecedented global business environment. Pierre Tossut: As Daniel Malcorps was preparing to step down from his CEO role (Malcorps led the company for 20 years, until the end of 2021 – eds.), we had started a transition process two years ago, so I could step in starting from the beginning of January this year. Cédric van Belle also took on the role of Chairman of the Board at the same time; we have been working together for the past two years in preparation for taking over the new assignments.
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www.bakingbiscuit.com 01/2022
Mihu: What has the transition entailed? Tossut: When we first communicated the plans internally, two years ago, we had initially envisioned a transition in which we would travel to all the countries where we work, to meet our colleagues. We had worked intensely on reviewing and updating our strategy. But then COVID-19 came; we had to reconsider all these plans, and we set up a crisis team instead. I took over the management of the crisis team for two years, as the situation progressed, starting from Asia, then with infections spreading throughout Italy and Europe, followed by the Americas. There were many unknowns managed by the crisis team, about how the situation would evolve, when (and if) it would end and what the impact would be. The upside to this situation was that we were forced to review everything we were doing. Our first priority was, of course, protecting our people in factories and making sure they didn’t get sick. But then we also reassessed our ongoing projects to make sure we were focusing on what consumers need. Early in the crisis, we did a study to see what was changing at the consumers’ level, which helped us shape the product portfolio that we needed to have in order to please them. We saw, for instance, people increasingly looking for health and wellbeing products, for foods helping to boost their immune system and products with less fat. We had to modify our product focus and make it even sharper during this time. A great deal of that effort went towards trying to make processes lean, focusing on
