Marel Townsend Further Processing, Boxmeer, the Netherlands, will have a new man at the helm come May 1: Gerrit den Bok.
A former process technologist, currently responsible for the global service activities as a member of the Management Team of Marel Stork Poultry Processing and chairman of the Marel Global Service Team, den Bok has had a career that spans over 23 years within Marel Stork Poultry Processing.
Coming from Marel Townsend Further Processing's sister company, the move presents quite a change. "I am being taken out of my comfort zone," he said. "Right now I am in my own field of experience but soon I will be faced with new equipment, a new market, new customers and new colleagues. I am very much looking forward to the challenge."
Having spent the last 14 years in the service organization, he is putting a priority on that function: "The service department can make or break a company. If you have excellent machines but poor service, you will lose customers very quickly." However, he plans to start by making sure the Product Development team is market-focused with a well defined strategy. In his view, that is at the core of the future success of the company. "It is a strong team with an enormous amount of knowledge of the market, the customers, the products but also the ingredients that make a great end product," he said. "We need to make full use of that knowledge."
