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AB Agri leadership talk recent restructure to support company in “growth mode” With the appointment of long-serving executive Simon Heath as its new Chief Commercial Officer in January this year, AB Agri has further solidified plans to grow the company’s operational footprint, tasking him with overseeing its expansion in Southeast Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Americas. “With his skills and experience from within our business, Simon is in a unique position to drive our commercial strategy and support me with our mergers and acquisition activities”, said AB Agri CEO, José Nobre at the time. “He will help to ensure we have an aligned, commercial, responsible and sustainable approach to the animal nutrition industry across continents.” To further support this ambitious growth strategy, the compound feed maker has recently undertaken an internal restructuring that it believes will allow the company to meet its expansion goals more effectively. Feedinfo recently sat down with both Mr. Nobre and Mr. Heath to find out exactly what the business’s restructure entails, why the company is betting on dairy, in particular, to support this expansion, and why its home base, the UK, remains a key geography for the company even as it looks to grow abroad. [Feedinfo] Mr. Nobre, what can you tell us about your plans for AB Agri over the coming five years? [José Nobre] We are in growth mode and our agenda is based on enabling a more responsible industry, capable of providing the world with affordable, high quality and responsible food. That’s the legacy we want to create. We want to transform AB Agri into a global driving force and that ambition is reliant upon our ability to provide customers with high value technology applications and delivering these solutions with flexibility in key agricultural markets. We have implemented a new structure in
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our business to provide the framework and focus to deliver our strategic goals of growing internationally and driving innovation. We will continue to invest in our ‘pipeline of innovation’ and we’re aligning new solutions and existing products with key customers’ needs and prioritising how customers prefer to engage with us. [Feedinfo] How does restructuring the business support this move? [José Nobre] To effectively serve our customers, we need to ensure we’re using our extensive industry experience and expertise in the most appropriate ways. We see three main opportunities to grow our business, and through our restructure we are now in the best position to realise them. Firstly, expanding our UK-based regional model into other key geographies. Our experience in this area allows us to identify and focus clearly on packaging solutions – for example products, customised support or tailored services – to the specific demand of the regional market we are targeting. Secondly, we want to expand the value and width of our technology portfolio. Our global technologies business units pursue category excellence and a world-class understanding of how each category can distinctively provide a solution to key customer needs. AB Agri has several established and new businesses within this group that are already investing in new technologies, and this will continue. Finally, to focus on specific species to provide a distinct technology platform that we believe is critical to provide affordable, high quality and responsible food. With this aspiration in mind, we are starting with a focus on dairy. We are enabling this growth by acquiring routes to market through investments, new portfolio categories and innovative technologies. We have also developed an ‘Innovation Lab’ which is focused on enabling new technology platforms with the ability to partner with external bodies and realise our vision of enabling more open innovation partnerships. [Feedinfo] Why the particular focus on dairy? How does this support your growth strategy and what role will your new head of Dairy Innovation, Dr. Michael de Veth, play in driving this?
www.feedinfo.com José Nobre
Photo courtesy of AB Agri
