TRADE AND MARKET I NG Danespo CEO Steen Bitsch: ‘Our principal aim is not growth, but stability and profit’ vate limited company and is now called Danespo Holland. It costs a bit more but, given the increased commercial activities in the Netherlands, it’s necessary.’ Is it really so much more expensive? ‘Well, the costs are still acceptable, but as far as the expenditure is concerned, we’re just like the Scots: frugal.’ At the same time, the CEO looked further across the Netherlands into Europe, to France. For years, Danespo has had a successful business there, Les Touquet Plants (LTP) France, which is comparable with the German NSP, Bitsch explains. ‘‘What we really need to be able to realise our future plans are more good-quality varieties’, Danespo CEO Steen Bitsch tells us. When you get an instruction assignment like that, you should at least have some affinity with potatoes? The Director’s face breaks into a broad smile. ‘You must have noticed that the name Bitsch doesn’t really sound very Danish. My family originally comes from the southern region of Germany. My great-great- great-grandfather left Germany in 1750 to start farming in Denmark. What was special was that he also took potatoes with him and so introduced the potato and its cultivation into that country. Although my parents and my grandparents no longer farmed, I seem to still have the potato virus in my blood’, the CEO explains his current position at Danespo. However, turning things around at Danespo A/S wasn’t exactly his first task in 2007. ‘Initially, we were still trying to sell the company in Europe. In view of the non-food activities’ branch, there were hardly any interested parties. I then took the plunge and started a reorganisation. This didn’t go as well as Bitsch had intended at first because in 2008 the world-wide economic crisis broke out, which also frustrated his company conversion plans. Only one small step at a time, could the Director put his plans into effect. All nonfood activities and non-successful potato sections were sold. Under the slogan ‘burn the cash’ Danespo reached for the cash reserves and bought various interesting potato activities, Bitsch explained. ‘In 2007, we sold the passenger car company, the Karidan LTD potato company in Ukraine and also DanOrganic A/S, a sales organisation for organic potatoes. An important take-over [of a minority holding, ed.] in that same year was that of Norddeutsche Saaten Partner GmbH (NSP) in Germany. Growers within NSP also propagated seed potatoes and from that moment they bought the Danespo A/S. varieties. At the same time, Bitsch consolidated the Danish company with an activity in the Netherlands, since then led by Peter van Eerdt. ‘The aim was and is the multiplication of seed of the company’s own varieties carried out by skilled growers in fertile and healthy soil. A sentence that can be easily placed on the website’, the Director jokes. ‘As you know, in the past autumn, the legal format of the branch was changed into a priAnd then Florimond Desprez came into the picture? ‘Please be patient, the story may become a little long-drawnout, but we’ll soon get to the dénouement’, the Director answers with a smile. ‘Because of the after-effects of the economic crisis, it was only in 2014 that we were able to sell all the divisions we wanted to sell. Then in 2015 and at the start of 2016, everything rapidly gained momentum. We were able to take over the remaining NSP shares. We also got the opportunity to buy 20 percent of the shares in Thorsens Chipskartofler A/S here in Denmark. In January 2016, there was another great opportunity to purchase the potato packaging station of Danpotatoes (Flendsted A/S group) in nearby Give.’ Flendsted is a well known Danish processor of table potato products, comparable to CêlaVìta and Peka-Kroef, which decided to start focusing on the processing of peeledfresh and deep-frozen potato products. The CEO’s reorganisation puzzle hasn‘t neared completion quite yet, but the cash is now almost gone. ‘What we really need in order to realise our future plans are more good-quality varieties as our primary objective is not growth, but stability and profit. What we already have is a number of excellent varieties and crossing parents which will help us along. We’re especially strong in sustainable and high-yielding varieties such as Sarpo Mira and Royal. We are equipped with all the knowledge in the domain of markers, we only lack the technology to develop this further. The Vandel breeding station is too outdated for that. What is still lacking is a well-equipped breeding station close by and technical support in the domain of variety development. I’ve informed the shareholders that it ‘s important to work on that as quickly as possible.’ So now we’ve come to the demand? ‘Exactly. The reason why we started to work with Florimond Desprez this spring is to make this possible. By selling a minority stake, we’ll be able to work on that new breeding station soon. We want to start selecting sustainable varieties here in the north that do well under local conditions in Scandinavia. Germicopa in France (taken over by Florimond Desprez two years ago, ed.) will be able to focus fully on the development of varieties for countries in Southern Europe under quite different conditions. The share situation within Danespo now is that Florimond Desprez has taken over 49 percent of the DLG shares. DLF, formerly DLF-Trifolium, had 50 percent and now Potato World 2016 • number 3 7 Pagina 6
Pagina 8Voor magazines, online studiegidsen en brochures zie het Online Touch content management beheersysteem systeem. Met de mogelijkheid voor een online winkel in uw club bladen.
Potatoworld 2016/3 Lees publicatie 41Home