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Starting June 1, Agrana will have a new manager at its peak in the form of 54-year-old Markus Mühleisen. This has been announced by the Agrana Supervisory Council. The German native of Düsseldorf was recently the German head of the Danish-Swedish dairy company Arla Foods.
Mühleisen succeeds the former head of Agrana, Johann Marihart (70), whose career in the sugar, starch and fruit producer would have ended on February 28 after almost 45 years. His mandate was extended by three months by the Supervisory Council. As senior group manager, Marihart headed the publicly traded international agricultural group for nearly three decades.
Like Marihart, the new man at the wheel considers himself a very experienced manager who has been responsible for the entire Arla Foods business in Germany and Austria with the Arla, Castello and Lurpak brands, which are also well known in Germany for the last three years. Prior to that, Mühleisen worked for eleven years in various management positions at the General Mills food company (Häagen-Dazs, Yoplait Yoghurt, Knack & Back) in Hamburg. The economist began his professional career in the late 1990s with Nestlé Cereals in Frankfurt am Main and Asia.
With his previous professional career in these companies that operate globally, Mühleisen has the best prerequisites to continue to successfully promote Agrana’s business around the world.
The manager’s name is probably only really known in Austria to connoisseurs of the dairy and food industries. In an interview with the trade magazine “Lebensmittel-Praxis” last year, Mühleisen said that he had “the utmost respect for our farmers and the work they do every day.” Although he is the head of a dairy giant, he admitted with a smile that he couldn’t milk cows himself. Mühleisen: “They told me that it would take me many years to understand modern agriculture in all its details.”
But milking cows is not part of the work profile of the general director of Agrana. Mühleisen will be primarily responsible for communication, strategy, human resources and economic policy.
Most recently, Agrana generated annual group sales of around 2.5 billion euros with around 9,400 employees in 56 factories around the world. According to its own statements, the company is the world leader in the fruit preparations market and the largest producer of fruit juice concentrates in Europe. Agrana is also one of the main manufacturers in Central and Eastern Europe in the segments of sugar and starch made from potatoes, corn and wheat, as well as bioethanol. Arla Foods, Mühleisen’s previous employer, is the third-largest dairy company in Germany.
According to company sources, Mühleisen’s appointment this year might not be the only castling and replacement job in Agrana’s boardroom.
– Image sources –
- Retouching Markus Mühleisen: Carlos Albuquerque, pixel & korn / AGRANA
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