East-West Seed announced today (January 24) the appointment of Mr. Ard Groot as its new Chairman of the Supervisory Board (SB), effective since 1 January 2018.
Ard succeeds his father and company founder, Mr. Simon Groot, who will continue to serve the Board as Honorary Chairman and Founder.
[caption id="attachment_5576" align="alignleft" width="453"]
Ard and Simon Groot. Photo: East-West Seed[/caption]
“I’m greatly inspired to take up this role, with the support of our members of the supervisory board (SB), our dynamic and forward-looking board of management (BOM), dedicated managers and all our 5,000 professional and hard-working staff around the world,” commented Ard Groot.
Prior to this, Ard served the leading vegetable seed company as Vice Chairman of the Board since 2012. Filling in this role now is longtime seed industry professional Douwe Zijp.
“I am happy to build on the legacy that my father Simon worked so persistently to create. We have come a long way in the last 35 years. Since our humble beginnings, we have established strong and mature companies in many countries. Innovation leading to improved vegetable crops with better yield and quality is now fully accepted and appreciated by farmers.”
In his role Ard will continue to closely collaborate with the Board of Management, consisting of CEO Bert van der Feltz van der Sloot, Vice President Simon Jan de Hoop, and Vice President Michel Devarrewaere, who are charged with executive management of the company.
Founded in the Philippines in 1982, East-West Seed is one of the largest seed companies in the world today. Asian Seed recently sat down with its founder, and one of APSA's founding members, Simon Groot, to talk about the early days of the company, and particularly the emergence of commercial vegetable breeding in Southeast Asia. This article can be found in
Volume 23 Issue 6 here.
