Vivescia, parent company of the world’s third largest malting group Malteurop is in turmoil. Six weeks ago, its CEO Alain Le Floch who had been at the helm of the company since 2012 announced unexpectedly to leave the company with immediate effect. Last week he started his new job as CEO of Terrena, another but even bigger French cooperative.
From March 2005 until December 2010, Le Floch had been CEO of Malteurop before being promoted to CEO of Champagne Céréales and after its merger with Nouricia in 2012 head of the newly formed Vivescia Group. He is said to be one of the driving forces behind the success of Malteurop.
Terrena is not only a competitor to Vivescia but is also much bigger. In 2018, Terrena achieved sales of EUR 4.9 billion with over 29,000 farmers and 15,800 employees. Vivescia, however, recorded in the financial year 2017/2018 which ended on June 30, 2018, sales of EUR 3.2 billion, 5 percent less than the year before and about one third less than Terrena. Vivescia is owned by 11,000 farmers from the north-east of France and has about 7,500 employees in 25 countries.
Christoph Büren, the President of Vivescia and the Board of Directors announced not to fill immediately the vacant position left by Le Floch, thus allowing “time for reflection to lay new foundations of operational governance.”
In order to ensure the smooth running of the Group and its companies, the Board of Directors announced a new organization of the management of the Vivescia Group:
Olivier Miaux, current CFO of the Group, has been appointed in addition to lead VivesciaIndustries, the entity that bundles all processing activities (malt, corn mill, flour mill, industrial bakery, animal nutrition and biotechnology). He will be supported in his new role by a new manager who is still to be found.
Jean-Luc Jonet, who joined the group in January 2019, will continue to lead Vivescia Agriculture (the Cooperative and its agricultural subsidiaries) as its Managing Director.
Malteurop, the malting division of Vivescia anounced last week to build a new malthouse in Mexico. The 120,000 ton plant is planned to be operational in the second half of 2021 (inside.beer, 3.9.2019). Last year, the company inaugurated its Australian plant in Geelong near Melbourne, which was enlarged from 80,000 to 200,000 tons at a cost of AUD 85 million (USD 61.3m) (inside.beer, 28.9.2018).
