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Agnieszka Getler-Kicman, Head of Strategy and Insights - Central Europe and Nordics at Danone Dairy
Agnieszka has sixteen years of professional experience in marketing roles in FMCG companies. As S&I Manager she was leading numerous projects concerning brand positioning, consumers & shopper understanding, product development, ROI, segmentation, portfolio & pricing strategy. Has worked in various categories, including non-alcoholic beverages, food categories i.e. early life nutrition, dairy, and food service, which helped her to gain understanding of the requirements of different groups & markets. Currently she works as Head of Strategy & Insights, for the region of Central Europe & Nordics.
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Milos Ryba, Head of Retail Strategic Projects at IGD
Miloš has been analysing global retailers and emerging markets for more than a decade. He leads IGD’s global discount retail team, and his deep expertise lies in understanding the strategic direction of discount retailers right across Europe. Miloš holds a Master’s Degree in Finance and Management from the Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic, and has also studied at the University of Mannheim in Germany.
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Peter Paul Coppes, Senior Dairy Analyst at Rabobank
On 1 June, Peter Paul Coppes joined the Food & Agribusiness Research Team as Senior Analyst Dairy. He built his experience at two dairy cooperatives, FrieslandCampina and Fonterra, along with a short stint at DE Masterblenders (Douwe Egberts/Sara Lee). Between 1998 and 2012, he held various finance director/managing director roles in five countries spread over three different continents. Prior to joining Rabobank, Peter Paul led a dairy start-up called smart | dairy and performed several consultancy assignments. He holds a master's in Business Administration, a post-doc in Controlling, and an Executive MBA from INSEAD. Peter Paul is Dutch, and he lives in Hilversum with his nine-year-old daughter.
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Jay Waldvogel, Senior Vice President - Strategy and Global Development at Dairy Farmers of America
Jay is responsible for leading DFA’s strategic planning process and supporting DFA’s business leaders in implementing the strategies. He also is charged with guiding DFA’s expanding global activities. Jay has more than 25 years of experience in the global dairy industry and spent more than a decade living and working overseas with leading dairy companies Campina in Europe and Fonterra Co-operative Group in New Zealand. He has held senior positions in finance, operations, marketing, strategy, mergers and acquisitions, sales and general management, including serving as Fonterra’s chief operating officer. Jay currently serves on a number of industry leadership groups and company boards, including as deputy chairman of the Global Dairy Platform.
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Jing Wei, Vice President of Heilongjiang Feihe Dairy Co Ltd
Jing Wei is the Vice President of Heilongjiang Feihe Dairy Co Ltd. Mr. Wei holds a Graduate Degree from the Peking University Executive Development Programme. Mr. Wei has over 15 years of experience in both Chinese and Global dairy industry and 23 years of experience in fast moving consumer goods.
Mr. Wei is responsible for Marketing, Distribution, Branding and Corporate Strategy in Feihe, and has been instrumental in leading Feihe to become the No.1 Infant Formula brand in Asia.
Building on its deep value chain expertise and its successful branding strategy “Infant formula special tailored for Chinese babies”, Feihe has established its strong brand image among its millions of consumers.
Feihe has also received many accolades for the quality of its products both oversea and domestically. Between 2015 and 2018, Feihe won four consecutive Monde Selection Gold Awards. Feihe is the first Chinese infant formula brand to win this award. In addition, Feihe wins more than 30 domestic awards every year. With its ingenious quality and innovative spirit, Feihe has gained a lot of reputation and praise in the industry, the academic circles and the business community.
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Charles Brand, Evecutive Vice President - Product Management and Commercial Operations for Tetra Pak
Charles Brand is Executive Vice President, Product Management & Commercial Operations with the Tetra Pak Group, and a member of the company's Global Leadership Team. He was appointed to the role in January 2015, with overall responsbility for the company's product portfolio, marketing and sales activities worldwide, and for its global environmental strategy. Charles joined Tetra Pak in 1985 as an Electornics Development Engineer in the Automation department of the company's Research and Development (R&D) division. In 1992 he was named Vice President of the R&D for Tetra Rex Packaging Systems and, two years later, he was appointed Managing Director of the company's Flexible Packaging Systems business. He subsiquently held a number of other senior management positions, including Managing Director of Tetra Pak Taiwan and global Vice President of Marketing & Product Managmenet, before being appointed to his current role in 2015.
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Volker Spiesmacher, Director - Sales and Marketing at Bericap
Volker Spiesmacher, born in 1954, graduated as an Economist in 1984 from the University of Mainz, Germany.
He has been working in the packaging industry since 1986 and during this time has held various positions, including working as Sales Manager for Tetra Pak Germany.In Russia he was appointed Deputy General Director at JV Progress, a food processing company producing apple concentrates and which was at that time the second largest juice bottler in the region. The company was a joint venture between Tetra Pak and the Russian State.
In Serbia Volker gained experience as Sales Director for Tetra Pak, building up the new sales organisation after the crises in the former Yugoslavia.Back in Germany he held the position of Vice President – Sales & Services, Europe/Asia for White Cap, a company of Schmalbach Lubeca, which became first Amcor White Cap and subsequently Silgan White Cap. In this role he gained management experience in many countries, including across Europe as well as in Asia and South America.
Volker has been working for Bericap Holding in Germany since 2007 in his current role as Marketing and Sales Director for the Bericap Group.
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Gerrit Smit, Managing Director of Yili Innovation Centre
Dr Gerrit Smit is the managing director of Yili’s European Innovation Center based in The Netherlands. This center is bridging Yili’s Innovation Center in China with strategic collaborating parties in Europe, being academia, contract research institutes, key suppliers as well as other dairy and food companies.
Before this role he worked as Senior Vice President R&D at Valio, Finland, from 2011-2015, where he was responsible for the R&D portfolio and in particular the overall long term strategy, as well as open innovation with external partners (OI). Previous to that, he worked in Unilever from 2004-2011 as research director covering the areas of Flavour and Consumer Research as well as leading the Open Innovation in this field. He also was a member of the global management team of the Unilever Food and Health Research Institute for 6 years at Unilever.
From 1993 until 2004, he worked at NIZO in The Netherlands, where he held various positions. In his last position he was member of the board of the organisation and headed the department of Flavour, Nutrition and Ingredients. Next to that he got in 2003 a professorship at Wageningen University (NL) in Molecular Flavour Science.
Gerrit got his MSc degree in Molecular Microbiology and Biochemistry, at Utrecht University, and got his PhD degree in 1988 at Leiden University. He also worked as a post-doc for 2 years in R&D in the United States, followed by a staff position for 2 years at Leiden University.
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Richard Hampton, Managing Director at Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative
Richard has been Managing Director since 2015, and over the last 16 years has been instrumental in the growth of the business into the £100m plus business it is today.
During his time at OMSCo, Richard has developed the business from a small organic milk brokering co-operative to the second largest dedicated organic milk pool in the world.
OMSCo remains wholly-owned by its 270 farmer members; has an extensive network of commercial and production partners and a global customer base for its extensive range of high quality organic dairy products.
OMSCo is technically-led, with extensive research at farm level to deliver unique attributes in organic milk that have relevance to customers and consumers of the future. Richard is now focused on the next phase of growth for OMSCo, expanding the product portfolio especially in cheese and specialist dairy ingredients to capitalise on the extensive global growth opportunity in these categories.
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Marcelo Pereira de Carvalho, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Agripoint
Founder and CEO at AgriPoint, a company that provides qualified information for the dairy market in Brazil through many channels: websites, symposiums and consulting services. Its website MilkPoint is the largest think tank for the dairy sector in Brazil, with over 100.000 subscribers.Is MilkPoint Mercado dairy market intelligence service is acessed by over 200 companies.
Marcelo gave more than 200 talks in 19 countries in the last 10 years, on the following topics: Brazilian dairy market perspectives; World dairy trade and perspectives; Supply chain management in the dairy sector and milk promotion; strategy and dairy innovation.
Agronomist, graduated at the University of São Paulo (1992), with a master degree in Animal Sciences at the same University (1988) and a MBA through FIA – Fundação Instituto de Administração (2005).
Marcelo is also a Founder of 2 other companies: EducaPoint, a startup working on online training for farmers in Brazil, and AgTech Garage, a connection hub for agtech startups and corporations.
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Anne Wong-Erven, Advisory Director at Zenith Global Ltd
Anne Wong-Erven is Zenith’s Advisory Director. She is responsible for leading the Insights and Advisory team. She has experience undertaking market opportunity assessments, route-to-market and channel distribution analysis, new product development and mergers & acquisitions studies.
Prior to joining Zenith in January 2015, Anne had ten years of experience within the Canadian and UK food and drink industry in supply chain and strategic purchasing, and account management roles.
Anne holds an MBA degree from the University of Bath and Honours Business Administration degree from the Western University, Ivey Business School.
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Richard Walton, Research and Development Manager at Meiji
Richard Walton works as an R&D manager in the Research & Development Division of Meiji Co Ltd. He has extensive experience in R&D and with patents related to dairy, functional foods and beverages, medical foods and pharmaceuticals. He is also responsible for international research collaborations and R&D related information technology.
During the course of his studies, he obtained a BA in Chemistry from Hendrix College (USA) in 1985 and subsequently a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Duke University (USA) in 1990. He was a Japan Science and Technology Agency Fellow at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) from 1991 to 1993, before joining Meiji. In addition to internal research planning and support activities, Richard has chaired multi-company working groups on intellectual property in Japan and led research collaborations with international partners. He is a member of the IDF Standing Committee on Marketing and led the organization committee for the marketing conference at the 2013 IDF World Dairy Summit in Yokohama.
Richard has given numerous international presentations on food R&D in Japan and Japanese food claims at events such as IDF Summits, ILSI conferences, InnoBev, Dairy Innovation and the World Dairy Congress.
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Mary Morrissey, Senior Management - Food & Beverage from Bord Bia
The Irish Food Board is the Irish State agency with responsibility for the promotion and development of sustainably produced Irish food and drink. Developed by the Irish Food Board and launched in 2012, Origin Green is a national sustainability programme for Ireland’s entire food and drink industry.
It is the only food and drink sustainability programme in the world operating on a national scale, uniting government, the private sector and food producers through the Irish Food Board. Independently verified and working across all levels of the supply chain, Origin Green enables Ireland’s farmers, food producers and retail and foodservice operators to set and achieve measurable sustainability targets. www.bordia.ie www.origingreen.ie
Mary is responsible for the domestic and international management of dairy, alcohol and seafood sectors in the Irish Food Board. She is a graduate from both Limerick and Cork Universities, (BA in Public Administration and MSc in Food Business) and has also undertaken the Food Industry Strategic Growth Programme at UCD, Smurfit Business School.
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Kristian Østerling Eriknauer, Vice President - Corporate Social Responsiblity at Arla Foods
Msc in Agriculture from The Royal Veterinarian and Agricultural Highschool of Denmark in 1993. MBA from Bath University in 1996. Employed by Arla Foods since 1998 mainly focusing on business development, business planning and innovation. Currently holds position as Vice President, Corporate Responsibility
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Mark Hopper, Sales Director of BAM Life and Founder & Director at Drinks 2 Market Solutions
Mark brings over 20 years of FMCG experience within the drinks sector. Working within both corporate and entrepreneurial businesses such as Scottish and Newcastle Plc (latterly Heineken) and the privately owned SHS Group.
He has worked in many senior commercial, sales, marketing and most recently innovation/R&D roles. He considers himself privileged to have worked on a number of market leading brands across both soft and alcoholic drinks including, Bottlegreen, WKD, Cobra Beer, Desperados, Merrydown Cider, Shloer, Newcastle Brown Ale, Scrumpy Jack, FirstCape wines, to name a few.
He’s recently launched his own business to help guide fledgling businesses realise their full potential and is currently supporting Bam life – a range of organic flavoured milk drinks.
He is also a part time lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire in marketing, innovation and business. In additional he’s a business mentor within the NatWest accelerator programme.
Lives in Cheltenham with his family and enjoys competing in triathlons and cycling events. Currently learning to sail lasers, however has ambitions for bigger boats!
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Shari Leidich, Chief Executive Officer of Know Brainer Foods
Shari is a driven entrepreneur who has launched two successful ventures focused on healthy eating.
In 2004, Shari encountered some health issues that led her to learn about the benefits of a raw food diet. In 2006, she founded Two Moms in the Raw - a company knows for its organic snacks – and grew it into a multi-million dollar business that you’ll find in grocery and health stores nationwide. She recently built on that success, publishing the Two Moms in the Raw cookbook, full of “simple, clean, irresistible recipes for your family’s health.”
Now she has turned her attention to your morning coffee by launching Know Brainer – a grab-n-go coffee creamer infused with ingredients that improve brain health. She was ahead of the curve with raw foods, but then awareness of the benefits built demand – and now Know Brainer is following the same trajectory.
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Deborah Carr, Founder and Managing Director at Nourish Kefir
Miloš has been analysing global retailers and emerging markets for more than a decade. He leads IGD’s global discount retail team, and his deep expertise lies in understanding the strategic direction of discount retailers right across Europe. Miloš holds a Master’s Degree in Finance and Management from the Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic, and has also studied at the University of Mannheim in Germany.
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Saskia van Battum, Asscoiate Analyst - Dairy at Rabobank
Saskia is a dairy analyst in the global RaboResearch Food & Agribusiness team. She is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
The RaboReserach Food & Agribusiness team is charged with analysing developments in food and agricultural markets and industries, and advising the bank and its clients on strategic implications for their businesses. Comprised of a network of some 90 analysts, spread across every major production and consumption region of the world, the team is a central component of the bank’s capacity for informed credit decision making, product development, advisory services, and strategic client partnerships.
Saskia’s focus is predominantly on the dairy sector in Europe, but she is also responsible for Rabobank’s Global Dairy Top 20 and the World Dairy Map.
Saskia has over 15 years of experience in the dairy sector. Before joining the research department, she worked as an IT information specialist within Rabobank.
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Harikrishnan Pillai, Insight Director at Zenith Global Ltd
Harikrishnan Pillai is Zenith’s Insight Director responsible for market intelligence studies, global databases, market reports, feasibility studies, due diligence and financial modelling. He has managed Zenith’s projects in USA, UK, Africa and Middle East, and Asia.
Prior to joining Zenith in 2011, Hari used to work in the IT and telecommunications industry managing projects in business intelligence and software product development for a range of clients from UK and USA.
An Indian national, Hari is fluent in Malayalam, Hindi and English. He holds an MBA from the University of Nottingham and a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Calicut.
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