TRADE AND MARKET I NG thens its position in Scandinavia thanks to a deal with the French Steen Bitsch: ‘Our principal aim is not growth, but stability and profit’ It’s a hectic day for the Danespo Director at the beginning of May. He is not only speaking to a curious journalist from the Netherlands but, at the same time, he is also expecting a top delegation from the French breeding station Florimond Desprez, which has taken over an important part of the company shares. Without doubt, they have also travelled to the Danespo head office in Give with a long list of questions and so Bitsch has a lot to communicate that day. In spite of the hustle and bustle of the moment, the Director looks and appears to be extremely relaxed. With a big smile, he apologises for the briefly overrun conversation with the men from Florimond Desprez, and hospitably pours coffee, giving his guests ample opportunity to ask questions. The conversation that follows moves roughly between two questions: exactly what sort of company was/is Danespo and what actual direction does it have in mind for the coming years? To more or less understand the recent share switch, you can’t ignore the history of the Danish company, so much becomes clear during the interview. And what you also can’t ignore is Bitsch himself as the big transformer of the previously very complicated trading company. ‘You should know that over 30 years ago Danespo was still a 100 percent state-owned enterprise, like so many other companies in this country. Slow, with a great deal of officialdom and also an enormously varied package of trading activities. During the 1980s and 1990s the government decided to privatise many of the state-owned companies. As Danespo traded mostly in agricultural products, logically the government looked for buyers that were active in this domain. That wasn’t so easy, because, in addition to food, the expanded group of companies also had a section of non-food activities that wasn’t entirely popular’, Bitsch describes the situation. Eventually, there were two large Danish companies that decided to buy a half of the company each. DLF-Trifolium – wellknown throughout Europe for its grass seed breeding – and DLG, a large Danish agricultural cooperative. What was the organisation then? Time for Bitsch to reach for an old organisation chart to help simplify the rest of the story. The diagram pertains to the situation in the year 2007. Below the parent companies DLF and DLG comes Danespo Holding A/S which covers three activities. Two of them relate to smaller cooperatives for the trading and packaging of table potatoes and the third is Danespo A/S itself. At that moment, the holding is 91 percent owner of these three companies and 9 percent is the property of the employees. From the Danespo A/S umbrella – from where most of the income must be generated – emerge four activities. On top are two potato breeding stations which, over the years, have become part of the company. The first is Sarpo Mira in Hungary, which produces the Sarpo Mira variety, among others, which is well known in the Netherlands. The second is Landbrugets Kartoffelfond Foraedlingsstation (LKF) Vandel in Denmark itself, where the well-known varieties, among others, Royal, Folva and Ballerina varieties are developed. LKF Vandel was only purchased by Danespo A/S in ‘In 2020, we hope to have come alongside Germicopa and Meijer’ 2007, together with the Danish starch cooperative KMC (Kartoffelmelcentralen). ‘Like the old Danespo, this company was also a state-owned enterprise’, Bitsch tells us. ‘Not terribly dynamic where variety development is concerned and certainly not if compared to the breeding activities that were taking place in the Netherlands at that moment, and that is putting it mildly’, he describes gently. What remains in the organisation chart are the lines to two big branches under Danespo A/S: the internationally-operating potato and nonpotato companies. The potato arm includes three companies: Les Touquet Plants S.A. in France, Karidan LTD in Ukraine and Danalpo S.P.A. in Algeria. Together with the two earliermentioned breeding companies, in 2007 these trading companies abroad formed the potato business of Danespo A/S. And in addition, there is also the Danish & International non-potato company’s branch, which operates under the name Danimex. Bitsch, ‘Danimex mainly carried out turnkey projects. There was an animal feed branch, there was trade in luxury passenger cars, the import and export of food ingredients and even commercial activities around Russian caviar. .All in all, a reasonably-complex arrangement, which ultimately wasn’t very profitable for Danespo A/S. In 2007, Danespo A/S wasn’t doing well at all’, Bitsch says. ‘At that time, I worked on the management team of major shareholder DLG and was asked to put the house in order and turn things around into a profitable potato company.’ Potato World 2016 • number 3 5 Pagina 4

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