De Lier, The Netherlands
July 1, 2009
 On
1 July, Marco van Leeuwen officially joined the Board of
Directors of vegetable breeding company
Rijk Zwaan in De Lier. He
will concentrate in particular on production, logistics and
commercial affairs.
Marco van Leeuwen (38) succeeds Anton van Doornmalen, and
together with Ben Tax and Kees Reinink he now forms the
three-headed management, which operates on a basis of
collegiality and is jointly responsible for the entire
enterprise, with each member having his own attention area. Ben
Tax has taken over the chairmanship from Anton van Doornmalen.
Marco van Leeuwen, employed by Rijk Zwaan since 1993, has held
the position of assistant-director for the past five years.
During that time he was involved, among other things, in setting
up and developing Rijk Zwaan Italy and was interim director of
Rijk Zwaan Nederland. After an extensive familiarisation period
he is looking forward to his new challenge: “In spite of the
present consolidation battles among breeding companies, we want
to keep Rijk Zwaan growing under its own steam. Major challenges
in this will be in particular investments in Research &
Development and continued international expansion. Due to the
fact that new varieties are being developed ever faster,
marketing and efficiency will also start to play a bigger part.”
Anton van Doornmalen remains a shareholder in Rijk Zwaan and
will continue to be active within the company in the coming
years. He will, for instance, become chairman of the Advisory
Council and continue to represent the company in trade
organisations Plantum, ESA and ISF. He expects that his
succession is in capable hands with Marco van Leeuwen: “Marco
has the ability to keep a good overall view and, where
necessary, implement structure. Combined with his broad,
international experience he is in the perfect starting position
to give further form to the commercial development of our
company.” |
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