© Daniel Jaouen – April 2021

Design and typesetting by Le Publieur
4, rue Jules Chaplain 75006 Paris
www.lepublieur.com
Front cover image by Emmanuel Orain
ISBN version papier : 978 2 35061 087 0

ISBN version numérique : 978 2 35061 088 7

Original French title : Lactalis à la conquête du monde. Ambition, Engagement, simplicité (Paris, February 2021)

Le Publieur

For Nathalie, Pierre, Marie and Lucie.

Preface

Today, with the Covid-19 crisis starting to feel like the new normal, Daniel Jaouen offers a valuable message combining confidence and optimism. After over three decades at the heart of Lactalis, and as CEO for the last ten years, he reveals his character and background, merged with the story of a family business from Mayenne which has become the world’s leading dairy group. Justifiably proud of his career and the performance of the company he oversaw, he has decided to set the record straight on a number of points and correct some common misconceptions. He has learned many valuable lessons from his experience of managing difficult situations, and he would now like to share these tips with the reader. Rather than trying to say how it should be, he prefers to set out his principles, his values and his methods.

Still too young to write his full autobiography, he instead reveals what makes him tick, by describing the key events which have shaped and guided his busy professional life. Whether they be true facts, his own values, simple expressions, sporting metaphors such as ‘a match is won on the field, not in the stands’, his philosophy at work or his long-term vision, everything you will read in this book is authentic, written in the simplest possible way, and encourages us to anticipate the future. The story, from the first line all the way through to the conclusion, aims to be ‘inspiring’, to use one of the author’s favourite terms. He is our guide to his own fascinating career path and proves that if you want to go ‘faster, stronger and higher’, it’s all about your will to succeed, your commitment, hard work, determination and empathy. Never forget where you have come from and be ready for whatever challenges lie ahead.

Daniel Jaouen’s own story and that of Lactalis are very similar. The Besnier family with André the founder, Michel the industrialist and Emmanuel the international player were visionaries, always ready to push the limits and innovate. They challenged outdated practices and traditions, anticipating future trends and constantly looking for the next big thing. They didn’t try to please the stock market or bow down to financial tyranny. Investment and external growth were given precedence over the payment of dividends.

Their fundamental philosophy has remained unchanged. Their desire for independence is an example of family capitalism with a focus on long term sustainability and clear realism, and they wanted the authorities to allow them freedom to manoeuvre rather than providing hypothetical subsidies. This strategy of distancing was not without risk. As such, in 2011, President Nicolas Sarkozy was both surprised and embarrassed during a visit to Italy to meet Silvio Berlusconi, President of the Council of Ministers. He was there to discuss key issues such as French military involvement in Libya and migration on the very day that Lactalis announced its intention to take over Parmalat.

The corporate agenda can regrettably clash with that of governments and this unfortunate episode revealed that, on the surface at least, entrepreneurs are more European than national political establishments. Takeovers involving prominent companies result in prejudice on both sides and this would be seen again a few years later when Fincantieri, an Italian shipbuilding group, expressed an interest in Chantiers de l’Atlantique.

At Besnier, and over many generations, they have first and foremost strived to create value and jobs, the complete opposite of the misguided concept of ‘a company without factories’ which a CAC 40 boss once dreamed of. From father to son, the company directors have succeeded in establishing solid and stable teams of managers, determined men and women capable of forming really effective teams with those at the sharp end of the business.

It was into this culture that a young Daniel Jaouen was welcomed and where he set to work using his intellect and perseverance. His skills and talents were easily recognized and he was able to rise through the ranks to become a manager within the group. In symbiosis with the culture at Lactalis, its values, its principles and its objectives, he found the perfect conditions to help the group expand and, at the same time, achieve personal fulfilment.

Daniel Jaouen has declared his leitmotif to be ‘People and Local First’ but paradoxically spent a great deal of time in planes travelling to visit his teams in 84 countries around the world, 51 of which are key to the company’s industrial output. As an eminent strategist, he understood the importance of history, how man has conquered the planet, and recognised the challenges of globalisation. The message he wanted to send was that ‘international is not a necessary evil’. The bond between Emmanuel Besnier and his CEO has left a lasting impression.

Together they carefully examined the market and identified targets. Fully aware of geopolitical issues, the opportunities for local development, the food needs of populations, and by evaluating their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, nothing could stop them from building their international network. The result was Lactalis becoming a global business. Their contact book was extensive, and they conferred and negotiated with major and minor actors alike. They did not waste their time within Parisian circles and kept their distance from the incestuous networks within French capitalism which were still keen on support from the state.

Without resorting to either complexes or dogmatism, they negotiated and oversaw both takeovers and joint ventures. It all revolved around dialogue, but don’t confuse this with procrastination as they believed that ‘if it takes too long, it won’t be as good’. Efficiency and consistency were the key ingredients needed to reach an agreement. There was no logic in using prestigious and ridiculously expensive consultants to justify their decisions and absolve them from liability if, unfortunately, the deal turned bad.

They accepted and managed that responsibility, believing that ‘a CEO is like a boxer in the ring’. Opening up to the rest of the world sounded the death knell for agricultural productivism. Europe had for far too long encouraged publicly-subsidised dairy exports but with no added value to the detriment of emerging countries whose nascent food economy was being stifled by our exports. The challenges involving food and society described by Daniel Jaouen were inevitable and, by setting up production sites in sub-Saharan Africa, Lactalis tried to absorb some of the potential candidates for migration which are today causing such headaches for our European democracies. This is precisely how ‘People and Local First’ works.

Reading this book, I was struck by the divergence between reality and the image of the group. Their preference for discretion has led to frequent condemnation by the media. No doubt this is due to the fashion in France for criticising and being suspicious of anyone successful. Added to that is the tradition among agricultural trade-unions of assuming that everything is dependant on decisions taken by the authorities and that any changes in the price of milk necessitate customary demonstrations in front of the local prefecture. As a last resort it always comes down to the Minister for Agriculture to set the rules.

By becoming the market leader, Lactalis set the trend! You have to wonder about the role of cooperatives which often pay less and are sometimes attracted by the Chinese model. As a Breton, and from a rural background, Daniel Jaouen had a respectful appreciation for breeders and milk producers and this guided his future decisions. Any manufacturer needs its suppliers and should value them and support them as they strive for excellence. Caught between a rock and a hard place - the supermarket industry which claims it is helping customers by lowering prices and producers who demand a decent price for their work and investment - an industrialist needs to hold firm and explain their position.

In this context, Lactalis has certainly taken the idea of discretion to new levels. ‘What is good does not make any noise and anything noisy is no good’, is an old saying in Mayenne. Daniel Jaouen was walking on eggshells when he wrote: ‘You need to communicate but without being too discreet, otherwise you might come across as unclear’. It was the regrettable salmonella crisis in Craon which triggered a real Copernican revolution internally. That being said, I’d wager Lactalis will be able to resist the temptation so many actors succumb to when they no longer understand how difficult it is to survive simply through communication. Such shadow puppetry methods have reached their limits, giving way to simplicity, because companies with complex structures are now the most vulnerable.

Daniel Jaouen’s very personal book expresses a form of measured anger because he explains how he headed up an exemplary group in many different ways, a company he managed with humanity and by being respectful towards all his partners. He has guided the business through numerous storms, including that triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, without serious damage and each time has come out stronger and ready to face new challenges and undertake new conquests. It is clearly now time to lift the veil and dispel the ‘Besnier-Lactalis mystery’. I thank the author for sharing with us the keys to this success: ‘ambition, dedication, simplicity’, rigor, realism, decentralisation, independence, responsibility and humility.

We should acknowledge the ardour and intelligence he brought to this local and global group. He has shown the wisdom of keeping his feet on the ground, maintaining the family balance and ties to those close to him.

A new life now beckons for Daniel. After having been an industry player, he will become an adviser working for Mabro Consulting. Outside the industry itself, the public sector and the state would do well to use his expertise to help pilot its long-postponed reforms and take inspiration from the recommendations outlined in this book. This work will appeal to anybody wishing to take charge of their destiny.

Jean Arthuis

Former Minister,
Former President of the Mayenne General Council.

Introduction

You hold in your hands a book motivated by numerous intentions. The first and most important of those was, modestly and without wanting to preach, to describe my adventure and my professional experience. I want to tell my family, friends and work colleagues, both old and new, all about the tremendous success story of a group which has remained 100% faithful to its founding family, Lactalis, and where I had the chance to mature throughout my career. Lactalis has been at the heart of the greatest developments in the global dairy and food industry in recent years. I am going to open a few doors for you here by explaining my outlook on its management, my own organizational and administrative techniques, and the human values which have made such a success achievable.

I am also eager to share with you my perspectives on our new world and the challenges it presents. A world with limited visibility but which is highly volatile and has not stopped changing over the past decade. We have gone from the financial and banking crisis of late 2008 to the historic Coronavirus health crisis which has had a massive impact on the world since it emerged in 2020. It is a world which is undoubtedly going to evolve further in the years to come. I wanted to put down on paper the individual way I have managed the group for the past eleven years, after seven spent at the helm of the international division. These years have been particularly rich in terms of experience and meeting people. I want to express my deep gratitude to the various teams at Lactalis, my colleagues, or my team-mates as I have always called them. These are the key people who have been with me on every step of this journey around the world.

At the age of fifty-six I felt the urge to hand over the reins after more than thirty years at Lactalis, the company I was lucky enough to join directly after finishing my studies. At the time, back in 1989, the group was still called Besnier. In December 2009, following my appointment as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the group, I put together the ‘Mach 2’ strategic plan to take the company through until 2020 and presented it to the Chairman of the Supervisory Board and all the group’s key players. It was a plan which aimed to drive Lactalis to further growth, to propel the group from fifth place up to the number one spot (global leader) in the sector. It should be remembered that in 2009 our turnover was 8.5 billion Euros and the aim was to hit 20 billion in 2020. With our latest takeovers, concluded in 2020, over the last twelve months we managed to reach 22.8 billion Euros.

When the ‘Mach 2’ plan was unveiled, certain people believed it was too ambitious, maybe even impossible! In recent years, many of our competitors have also set out plans spanning ten years or fewer, but have never been able to see them through. All our goals have been achieved and we even got there a year ahead of time, in 2019, while managing to respect and spread the group’s core values. These values were summed up in three words in 2010, terms which also match my personal philosophy: Ambition, Commitment and Simplicity. In 2020, a pivotal year if ever there was one, Lactalis is now the international leader in the dairy-product sector. We are number one in the French food marketplace and the second largest French food producer. Lactalis is in ninth place in the global food sector and in thirteenth place in the global consumer products sector.

Walking away from Lactalis while it is at the top, with a sense of having more than accomplished what I set out to do, is an incredible opportunity. It’s a just reward for all the work we have put in. I am so pleased to be leaving the company in such a strong, healthy position and with truly motivated and high quality teams. I considered my decision very carefully as it wasn’t an easy one to take and surprised more than a few people. I weighed it up before talking to my wife and children but they understood and supported me all the way. You should never forget that you only live once. I now plan to enjoy life with my loved ones but, as you can imagine, I won’t be sitting around doing nothing!

Chapter 1

From Brittany to Mayenne via the world

I’m not used to talking about myself, being a fairly reserved type of person. My family originally comes from Finistère and I was born on May 19, 1964 at the hospital in Quimper. My mother, Nicole, is from Cap Sizun at the far western point of Cornouaille in Brittany. She was a seamstress, working at home on her Singer sewing machine, and also helped out in local shops. My father, Alain, came from Saint-Coulitz, a small village near Châteaulin.

He was a police officer, based at the local headquarters in Quimper. He left every morning in his uniform and rarely spoke to me about his work. He was a quiet man like me. As a family, we don’t like to say too much, preferring to keep good and bad news to ourselves. I was the oldest child in the family, born three years before my brother, Joël, and ten years before my sister, Cathy. Joël today lives in Russia where he teaches French. Cathy, a nurse, lives in Quimper and takes good care of our mother, just as she did with our father until his death. My mother is still in good health and plays regular card games with her friends.

My paternal grandparents, Alain and Marie-Jeanne, were farmers in Plomodiern. They had a dairy farm but also grew a few cereal crops. They were forced to stop when my grandfather died young, at the age of just fifty. When Cathy was born my parents moved to Plonéis, a small town of 2,400 people ten kilometres from Quimper. I used to enjoy visiting my friends and helping with the harvest, digging potatoes and picking beans. This is probably where my work ethic first took off! There were a number of dairy farms in the area, which is where my early interest in cows came from. As a child, I couldn’t get enough of salted butter, milk and cheese, particularly Camembert and Emmental. I put milk in my coffee, and still do!

At the Brizeux secondary and high schools in Quimper I proved to be a serious student who got good results, regularly coming near the top in class. I must admit, I was soon more interested in numbers than the written word or philosophy! I enjoyed reading Onze, France Football, L’Equipe and Télégramme de Brest far more than Stendhal’s Scarlet and Black - a French literary classic which I read through to the end only because I had to!

Football is a sport that I have always loved and I began playing from an early age, moving up through the different levels and teams at the Plonéis sports club. I was a midfielder who enjoyed passing the ball to others just as much as scoring goals myself. Once the official season had ended, my pals and I would take part in six-a-side competitions every weekend during the summer months, using half-sized pitches with one goalkeeper and six players. We travelled all over Finistère having a wonderful time.

Up until my last year of high school I had a fairly limited idea of what I wanted to do next. I simply knew that I was fascinated by the world of food and agriculture. I left Brizeux with a basic maths diploma and went to Rennes to continue my studies at the Chateaubriand High School. I didn’t like the concept of end-of-year exams to decide who would move up a class, finding it too random a way of selecting students. I felt it wasn’t the right atmosphere for me so, even though I could have continued, I decided to drop out without any major regrets at the end of my first year.

Friends told me about the Angers Agricultural High School (ESA) which offered students a four-year course (five years today) with specific modules relating to the dairy industry, allowing students to become familiar with all the technical details. The on-campus teaching was boosted by periods of work experience on farms. My first such opportunity for this was in the Cher department. It was the perfect place for me and I fitted right in, even becoming godfather to Clothilde, a daughter born to the farmers during my time there. We still keep in touch to this day. I followed this up with a period of training at a dairy - La Société Laitière de Cornouaille (SLC) in Quimper - which has been producing butter and Emmental since 1923 and is part of the Entremont Group. I was also involved in two research programmes whilst there, looking at butyrics and lipolysis.

For the unfamiliar, butyrics are bacteria - the sworn enemy of cheese makers and the ones which cause holes and give Emmental a sour taste. A larger study involved lipolysis which is the breakdown of fat caused by enzymes called lipases. This process leads to the rancid taste found in butter and cream. I was fascinated by all this, discovering everything you could make from milk. When people asked me what I wanted to do later, I was able to tell them: one day I hope to run a milk processing plant.

At ESA Angers I coached the football team and was elected President of the sports club. Taking charge of team sports was a role which really suited me.

As part of my studies focussing on the agri-food sector, I decided to carry out some research into biotechnologies and lactic ferments in relation to the dairy industry which was already of interest to me. I prepared my thesis, working with a classmate called Yvon, on the dairy industry and the genetic variants of milk - for the uninitiated that means qualitative criteria such as blood groups - which are needed to achieve good cheese yields and therefore mean we need to select cows accordingly. The title of the thesis was impressive: The electrophoretic polymorphism of lactoproteins and the zootechnical consequences. You weren’t expecting something simple, were you? This is serious stuff!

It was a lot of hard work. I got up before dawn at five o’clock every morning of the week. I drove two hundred kilometres a day for six months in my special white Citroën 2CV 6. I couldn’t even listen to music as the engine made so much noise! I visited a grand total of 987 farms in Maine-et-Loire and Loire-Atlantique. I already knew all about how to milk cows as I had acquired the expertise years earlier in Plonéis, on a farm belonging to a classmate’s parents. My project involved collecting milk samples in small pots. I then analysed those samples in the ESA laboratory to understand the correlations between the genetic variants of milk and cheese yields. In total I studied 3,167 samples, in the same number of small jars. I therefore already had one foot in the door to the agricultural and food-production world with great opportunities to go much further.

After passing my exams and graduating with an engineering degree, I was called up for military service. I headed off to Brest to my posting at the headquarters of France’s nuclear-submarine-launched missile fleet. Unfortunately, I never actually had the opportunity to set foot on board a submersible! I taught maths to naval recruits for two to three hours per day. It was a great opportunity to study the different social groups which my students represented. At weekends, or even sometimes during the week, I went with my uncle Antoine (who lived in the city) to watch Stade Brestois play football at the Francis-Le Blé stadium. Rather ironically, Stade Brestois was at the time sponsored by Parmalat, promoting its Santal brand of fruit juice, a company which Lactalis would buy out more than twenty years later.

I was given special permission to cut short my 12-month stint with the navy and left Brest to continue my postgraduate studies in food management for a year at ESSEC in Cergy-Pontoise. The International Agri-Food Management Institute (IGIA) offered me the opportunity to acquire an insight into how businesses operated. To help pay for my studies, I worked as assistant to the deputy, Jean-Louis Floriot, who was also a teacher at IGIA. He prepared marketing, financial and technical studies for companies in the dairy sector and I worked with him on a number of projects: for the Saint-Hubert company which owned Bifidus Actif yoghurts and Saint-Hubert margarine as well as the Bridel group.

B’A and Bridel would also end up being acquired by Lactalis once I joined the group. My thesis at IGIA once again revolved around milk - this time being a study of the market, technologies and strategy adopted by players in the consumer cream sector. At the time those companies were Yoplait, Bridel, Elle-et-Vire (part of the ULN cooperative), Gervais Danone, Nova (also a member of the ULN cooperative), Claudel (part of the Besnier group), Flory de Valmont (part of the Perrier group) and Est-Lait. Over thirty years after I wrote that thesis, Lactalis is now the world leader in consumer cream and butter products and has been number one in France’s cream sector since 2015 thanks to our CEO Eric and his team’s determination. Eric has bravely struggled with serious illness over the past few years without ever complaining and I wish to pay tribute to him here.

In May 1989, once I had finished my studies at IGIA, I made the good decision to attend a ninetieth anniversary party at ESA in Angers. There was a large crowd present that evening but I struck lucky. Near the buffet, I was drawn to a young, blonde girl in a red dress. Despite my shyness, I decided to approach her and we began a conversation. Her name was Nathalie and I learned she was five years younger than me. She told me that she came from northern France but that she was living in Gouvieux, in the Oise region, not far from Chantilly. Her engineer father, Claude, and her mother, Andrée, both came from the same town, Saint-Saulve in the north. Claude worked alongside Professor Alain Carpentier on the invention and design of the first artificial heart.

Nathalie was a second-year student at ESA Angers and still trying to decide what to do once she graduated. It was love at first sight. We met up again soon afterwards in Paris for lunch at a Hippopotamus restaurant next to Montparnasse station. We capped off a great day by going to a show, ‘Existe en trois tailles’ feathuring Mimie Mathy, Michèle Bernier and Isabelle de Botton. It was obvious from that moment on that we were made for each other. We married three years later in Gouvieux and our son Pierre was born in 1995, followed by our daughters Marie and Lucie in 1997 and 2000.

When it came to starting work, certain choices were now necessary. I was absolutely sure that I wanted to work with milk, in one form or another. I also wanted to stay close to the west coast which is where I felt at home. I set my sights on three big names in the dairy industry and went to meet all of them. My first interview with Bridel, in Bourgbarré, went well. At IGIA I had done some research into the company’s Scoony spread, sold in a tube and marketed with the slogan ‘A new taste for adventure’, but which ended up being a resounding flop.

This rather set the tone for the interview. I didn’t mention it but was not wholly convinced of the company’s potential in the medium term. In Paris, I then went to Mamie Nova, a famous yoghurt brand which was then owned by a cooperative and is today part of the Andros family. I unfortunately made a huge mistake at the end of the interview. A little nervous, I confused Mamie Nova with another elderly lady whose death had recently been reported. They didn’t hold it against me and I even received a job offer!

On a Saturday morning, the 25th March 1989, I took the train to Laval. I had never visited the city before but would soon discover just how nice it was to live there. The Besnier family has a reputation for being tough when it comes to business but it was the company which most appealed to me, primarily due to their ambition. The meeting was arranged for ten o’clock with the general manager, Mr. Marcel Urion. It took me a good 20 minutes to walk from the station to the company’s headquarters but I arrived early. Besnier was my target company so I had prepared carefully. I waited quietly in the deserted lobby for half an hour until Mr. Urion finally came to fetch me.

He was an impressive chap, both in the language he used and his stature. He asked me a series of very direct questions but I felt we had rather similar character traits. “We have so many candidates, I’m not sure whether we’ll be able to offer you a job”, he announced abruptly as we went back down the stairs to the exit. I returned to the station to wait for my train back to Paris not totally confident that all had gone to plan. However, on Monday morning I received a phone call from Mr. Urion’s personal assistant, Claudine Bulot. This is the same Claudine who is still my assistant today! They obviously don’t hang around at Besnier when it comes to making decisions! I was hired before I had even finished my studies.

I started work in August 1989 as a Management Assistant with responsibility for overseeing the organisation of Besnier’s research and development activities, its industrial management processes and various other technical and administrative projects at the company’s sites, all of which was a great eye-opener. I soon made my mark on the large office where four of us worked. Two were long-standing employees and the other was a young graduate who had been with the company for a year. The job was the perfect opportunity to see the reality of life in a company, as well as how to manage it! I was soon thrown in at the deep end. I was given the job of improving the cheese output at an Emmental factory in Fougerolles-du-Plessis, Mayenne. I prepared my plan based on what I had learned from books, and that included how to make cheese to at least appear credible in the eyes of my colleagues when explaining how they could do things better.

Once I arrived at the factory I met the Director, Mr. Lhommedé. He was around sixty years old and close to retirement. I was just a novice who had arrived to give him advice but I was determined to stand my ground. Early on a Saturday morning, just before attending a friend’s wedding, I carried out some production tests so as not to disrupt the factory’s operations during the week. I was already deeply interested in the project.

Over the following months on the front line and in other factories I carried out reviews of the production processes, looking in great detail at all the equipment and even quantifying the wastage in pipes. I studied how the ingredients and packaging materials were managed by introducing new monitoring tools. I ran productivity management studies using a stopwatch to analyse production-line stoppages. These all laid the foundations for my future work. The adventure had begun.

The situation became even more complicated once the company completed the takeover of Valmont, the fresh milk division of the Perrier group with factories in Montauban and Auch. This is a key sector and in 2020 Lactalis was the market leader in France with its Lactel brand. To collect and bring milk to the factory we needed tankers and drivers. Those used in Montauban and Auch were not company employees but fully independent. In January 1989, at the time of the takeover, these drivers had just abandoned the company to instead collect milk for a new Spanish competitor who had recently set up a site in the region.

We therefore needed to quickly organise new milk-rounds, work out how we could make them more efficient and reduce the costs. Once again there was no time to sit back and relax. In the eye of a storm, you have to hold the rudder straight and keep a firm grip. This is a sailing metaphor that I love to use and will often do so in the coming chapters. I knew more or less how to solve this situation. Before I left work at the end of the day for Montauban, driving my white VW Golf, Mr. Urion gave me some names to contact. I started by buying trucks and recruiting drivers with the help of the area’s regional collection manager, Claude, who was soon to be promoted to Group Collection Director. Now retired, he remains a firm friend.

I then spent two years in Laval overseeing the group’s industrial management strategy. I was closely involved in our acquisition of Bridel. I was again promoted and spent the next two years as Head of Management Control for the milk and fresh products division, alongside Mr. Bernard Decker. As well as being in charge of the milk and fresh products sector, he also managed the international market. He was a very colourful character, forthright, with a passion for good living. He had a good heart and spent the weekends hunting. Mr. Decker always stood up for his teams.

He took me under his wing and I learnt so much from this true pioneer. We made a great team, both in terms of our work and characters. He was the one who began the international division ‘by digging out mountains with a teaspoon’, as he liked to say. He maintained a strong relationship with distributors and created subsidiaries to oversee sales in Europe and the United States. His goal was clearly to support and encourage me so that I would be able to take over from him when he retired.

Further promotions kept on coming. In January 1994, I was appointed Director of Management Control for our international operations and the milk and fresh products divisions with the objective of boosting profits - even though that was never explicitly admitted. One evening, I arrived in London for my first overseas visit. I met Mr. Decker, Andy (the director of the subsidiary) and his colleagues at an expensive hotel. They had eaten a great meal and were smoking cigars. I reminded myself that I really would have to train them to be not just innovators but also managers!

The results were positive and my management proved its efficacy. I was then promoted to Deputy Director General for Europe in January 1998, and to Director General for Europe in April 2000. I worked with a team which I nicknamed ‘the musketeers’. They are now all retired except for Laurent, the group record holder for overseas postings. After starting off in England, he moved to Poland, to the head office in Laval, to Russia, Kazakhstan, Spain, India and is now in the United States. I was then appointed Managing Director for Europe and Deputy for our international division.

Then, for seven years, I was Managing Director of all our European and international businesses after Mr. Decker retired in 2003. I was supported by a ‘dream team’ with whom I am still in contact. Many of them are now retired: Patrice, Jean-Pierre, Alfred, Jean-Louis, Agnès, Brigitte, Wilfried and Régine. With this ‘dream team’, we decided that every year in December we would organise conventions in a different city: Rome in 2005, Moscow in 2006, Cairo in 2007, Zagreb in 2008 and Prague in 2009. The keys to their success are contained within anecdotes which we prefer not to reveal!

During my final eleven years at Lactalis, I was honoured to be appointed Chairman of the Management Board and group Chief Executive Officer at the end of 2009. This was the longest period I had ever held any one position and it was the hardest in terms of responsibility.

Conclusion

In this new world, turned upside-down by the Coronavirus crisis, and still with a lot of uncertainties, Lactalis has nevertheless managed to achieve strong growth and has also clearly outperformed the competition. In August 2020, Rabobank published an analysis of the global dairy industry. They titled it, “To invest or to divest, that is the question”, referring to Lactalis as a ‘titan’ and a ‘dairy empire’. Lactalis’ answer to Rabobank’s question is clear. On November 24th, the day after Danone published its reorganization plan...