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    • Unilever  -  PowerBar Europe  -  Mars  -  Nestlé  -  Nutrilife  - Alpro -  Atlantic Multipower  -  Barilla  -  Lonza  -  Solae  -  Nutribio  -  CPW  -   Cadbury  -  Artenay  -  Solae   -  Vitality Brands

Speakers

 

Mr. Paul Cartwright has worked in fmcg food & beverages for the past 30 x years, in the area of Sales & Marketing. The first 10 years of his career were spent with Cadbury Trebor Bassett in account management, before moving on to the Soft Drinks Industry for a further 10 year period, managing all of the UK's top flight grocery supermarkets across both Brands and Own Label. In 2002 he became Sales Director for a £100m Chilled Seafood company, before then moving to Halo Foods in 2005 as Sales & Marketing Director, during which he managed the sales/marketing & development functions of the business. His career at Halo involved him with most trading formats within the UK, along with overseas distributors and the development of new customers. At the end of 2011 Paul left Halo and is now considering the next opportunity to build upon his extensive sales & marketing experience, and industry knowledge.
   

Mr. Edward Garner, rather than being a pure ‘Market Researcher’, Ed’s background is in Sales, National Accounts and Marketing; experience which he gained within Unilever.  This means that he is keenly aware of the need to present findings in a clear and actionable manner.  His ability to do this is supported by feedback from conference appearances across Europe, USA, Australasia, Asia Pacific and South America for numerous organisations including IGD, Citigroup, McKinsey, PwC, Marketing Week, ADMAP, AGRA, NFU, The Grocer and many leading UK FMCG clients in addition to occasional radio and TV work. Edward is married to a school head with two grown-up daughters who are teachers and he tries to avoid being put in detention.
   
Ms. Lu Ann Williams is Head of Research at Innova Market Insights. She started her career in The Netherlands twenty years ago with Wolters Kluwer before moving to leading science publisher Elsevier. For the past fifteen years she has been involved in the international food industry where she works with the world’s largest food and beverage companies on product development and marketing strategies, trends analysis, open innovation projects and technology scouting. She comes from Georgia (USA) and graduated from Georgia Tech and got her MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. 
   

Mr. Chris Wall's background includes working in various sectors of the buying industry and has had responsibility across all of the FMCG categories. Chris joined Poundland in February 2009 from Poundstretcher where he worked as a Senior Buyer for 5/6 years. Chris has gained a huge amount of experience across the discount sector and has also worked within Wholesale with Nisa and the Coop. As Trading Controller for the FMCG team within Poundland Chris's categories stretch across food & drink, pet food, batteries, household cleaning, health & beauty and the baby category. Chris has experienced the growth within Poundland and quotes "the speed of Poundland and the professional approach makes this the dynamic business it is today and fills each day with something new and as a business we pride ourselves on giving our customers Amazing Value Everyday"
   

Mr. Julian Mellentin is one of the world’s few international specialists in the business of food, nutrition and health. He is the Director of New Nutrition Business, (www.new-nutrition.com). Founded in 1995 New Nutrition are the experts in the business of food, nutrition and health and their research is used by more than 1,700 companies in 42 countries. Companies such as Danone use New Nutrition as their primary source of insights into food and health strategy. The company also provides expert consultancy to a small number of clients. NNB has a small staff – all with experience in nutrition or in food and beverage marketing – but a global perspective, with offices in London and New Zealand and affiliates in Japan and Finland. Julian is co-author of The Functional Foods Revolution, the first-ever book on the business of functional foods and The Food & Health Marketing Handbook. Julian was a branded product marketer for 10 years before founding this company. He has practical experience of marketing branded products and B2B marketing in most European countries as well as in the US and Australia. He earned his first degree at Oxford University and MBA from Manchester Business School.
   
Mr. Gregory Paul, Ph.D., M.B.A. is the global marketing director of sports nutrition and weight management at Solae, an alliance between DuPont and Bunge Limited.  In this position, Dr. Paul is responsible for promoting the use of Solae soy proteins in foods and dietary supplements that target exercise enthusiasts and competitive athletes as well as individuals interested in managing their weight. He has over 25 years experience in the food industry working with commercial products and ingredients targeting improved health and performance. He regularly consults with food companies around the world for the development of new products that target sports nutrition and weight management consumers. He regularly speaks to the media and consumers about issues related to sports nutrition and weight loss. He received a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in exercise physiology from The Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois –Urbana-Champaign, where he was also an NIH-Postdoctoral Research Fellow in molecular biology.  He went on to earn an MBA from the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University.  He is a Fellow with the American College of Nutrition and is a member of the American Society for Nutrition Sciences, American Society of Clinical Nutrition, American College of Sports Medicine, Institute of Food Technologists, and the American Dietetic Association.
   

Mrs. Marianne van Leeuwen has over 15 years of experience in digital media, helping brands to be successful on the (mobile) internet and in social media. Since the world is becoming more feminine and women represent 80% of consumer purchases, Marianne decided to specialize in ‘marketing to women’. In 2007 she founded Sister, a digital marketing agency helping brands to connect to women. Recently, she published the book: Mag het ietsje minder roze? about marketing to women in the digital age. Marianne started her career as an internet entrepreneur. She founded two internet startups: MiepKniep, the first price comparison website in the Netherlands, and welikefashion.com, one of the first Dutch fashion webshops. Marianne also has extensive experience as a consultant, inspiring brands to capitalize on the opportunities that digital media and women offer.
   

Mr. Harmen Lücker is a Management consultant and leading the Operational Excellence group for Bearingpoint consulting Benelux. This group is specialised in business development and redesigning business processes to achieve improvements in cost, quality, service and delivery speed. Harmen obtained a Masters in Industrial Management and worked over 20 years in a broad range of sectors e.g. Food, Pharmaceutical,, Consumer electronics, Fast Moving Consumer Goods, Manufacturing, Chemicals, Supply Chain Management (high tech industry), Utilities (energy supply and energy production). As Management Consultant Harmen has been responsible for a broad range of high impact program & project management assignments to establish dramatic business improvement. Prior to this position he has been working as a line manager operations. During this period he was responsible for the establishment and growth of several organisations in high demanding and fast growing international business environments. By both these working experiences, as management consultant and line-manager, he has had the opportunity to gain a broad business experience in several sectors and various lines of business such as business development, manufacturing, logistics, engineering and management accounting.
   

Mr. Ton Kléberg started as CEO at Ravensbergen in 2011. He has extensive experience in production automation, plant management and restructuring production plants mainly in the Food Industry. His specialty lies in restructuring and revitalising production plants. He has a broad technical background and extensive experience in project management.
   

Mr. Koen de Jong is founding director of IPLC. He has extensive management experience in the private label manufacturing industry in Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. He has been involved in numerous M&A transactions in the Benelux. His private label strategy and business planning involvement includes company analysis and benchmarking, board consulting and the participation in supervisory boards. He speaks fluent English, German, French and Dutch (mother tongue). Since 2003 he has been working as a consultant for a large number of manufacturers and retailers in Europe and beyond. He published two books: Private Labels in Europe and Private Label Uncovered of which the latter was nominated for the Marketing Literature Award 2011.
   
Ms. Karin Feenstra is the Consumer and Market Insight Manager at Fonterra Europe. She obtained her Masters from Tilburg University before beginning her career with Procter & Gamble, in Geneva Switzerland. Working primarily in the beauty sector, she worked on brands such as Head & Shoulders. When she accepted a role in Philips as a Senior Consumer Marketing Manager Hair Care she moved back to the Netherlands. In 2011 Karin took up the challenge to create and develop a Consumer Insight strategy for Fonterra, the New Zealand based Dairy Ingredients company who recently transitioned their European Headquarters to new offices in Amsterdam. After extensive consumer & market deep dives across Europe, she is currently developing a segmentation model enabling Fonterra to link its ingredients portfolio to existing and future consumer needs.
   

Mr. Heinrich Prokop has sucessfully developed a cereal business from flour mill to leading B2B supplier for international companies around Europe. After selling the business in 2009 he's still in role as CEO of Gutschermuehle. He's interested in new business ventures, where he can bring in value not only as an investor. His specialties are M&A, turn around projects, cereal`s and hospitality industry.
   
Ms. Claire Nuttall has over 20 years experience working in the world of brands, helping brands inspire and realise real innovation success.  She started out her career in France within RSCG, she then spent 6 years at Grey Matter as  Head of Creative Strategy, 12 years as a Partner and Head of Consumer Brands at Dragon Rouge and has now been with 1HQ for almost 2 years as a Partner and Director of Insight & Innovation. She is an inspiring and fresh thinker who has driven major game changing Strategy, Insight and Innovation for clients including Nestlé, Kerry Foods, Unilever, GSK, Carlsberg, Premier Foods, Bacardi, Twinings, ABF, Sainsburys, Burtons Foods, Campina, amongst many others. She has also led pioneering health projects around the future of food and how brands can best develop to appeal to new and emerging audiences. She has worked with societal and attitudinal trends in food and drinks and health for over 10 years and regularly contributes to conferences and thought pieces on opportunities for brand growth.  Claire loves nothing more than breakthrough new approaches and then applying the thinking to brands, determining how they can create and develop category changing famous brands for the future.
   

Prof Dr. Fred Brouns obtained a PhD in Nutritional Physiology at the Maastricht University in the Netherlands on the Topic “Food and Fluid Related Aspects in Highly Trained athletes” For this work, which included aspects of hydration, metabolism, energy and physical performance, he was awarded with the Dutch Sports Medicine Award. He has >25 years experience in the field of life sciences and health nutrition and headed R&D functions at Wander Dietetics, Sandoz Nutrition, Novartis Nutrition, Eridania Beghin Say, Cerestar and Cargill. Additionally he fulfilled positions at the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) Europe as chair of the Carbohydrates Committee and Pilot of various expert panels.  At IDACE, Paris, he chaired the expert panels infant nutrition; sports nutrition; functional foods and Food Supplements. He obtained fellowships of the American College of Sports Medicine and the European College of Sports Sciences and is an invited member of the British Nutrition Society. He was consultant of the IOC, various NOC’s, the Dutch Football team and guided worldclass sportsmen and women. He is a registered Biomedical Researcher and Board member of the Dutch Academy of Food Science. He has published extensively and is a global speaker in the field of Life Sciences and Nutrition. Today he holds a chair in Health Food Innovation at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life and Sciences within the research school NUTRIM (Nutrition, toxicology and metabolism Research Institute Maastricht) of Maastricht University. His current research interests are especially related to health and application aspects of sugars, sweeteners, dietary fibers, pre-biotics and functional food ingredients in food and drink. He is Program director of the international MSc program “Health Food Innovation Management”

   
Mr. Guillaume Colmant (Cosucra Groupe Warcoing - Belgium) is Bio Engineer, graduated in 2002 from the University of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium. He first started his career at UCL as researcher on plant breeding, and completed his education with a Master Degree in Biological and Agronomical Engineering. In 2004, he joined Syngenta, the world-leading agri-business company where he looked for product management of crop protection products in Belgium and Netherlands. He moved in 2011 to Cosucra as Product Manager for Pea Ingredients (Pisane pea protein, Swelite and Exafine pea fibres, Nastar pea starch).
   
Ms. Gaëlle Gautier (Cosucra Groupe Warcoing – Belgium) graduated in 2001 from the INSFA, a 5-year French school specialized in food business and food technology. From 2001 to 2004 she worked as development engineer at Nutribio (France) in the making of dietetic products in forms of powders and bars : slimming; energy, high protein and other products. Then, she moved to Cosucra Groupe Warcoing, a Belgian company producing chicory fibres (Fibruline inulin and oligofructose) and pea ingredients (Pisane pea protein, Swelite and Exafine pea fibres and Nastar pea starch) where she has been working as application manager since 2004. She is in charge of dairy, bars, confectionery, beverage and powder blend applications.
   
Ms. Despina Ioannides, after graduating with a degree in Chemistry from the University of Athens (GR), Despina continued her postgraduate studies in Food Technology (MSc) at the Wageningen University (NL). In 2008 she has joined National Starch Food Innovation and since 2009 she is the Technical Development Leader of the Food Nutrition Portfolio at National Starch Food Innovation.
   
Ms. Laura Goodbrand joined NSFI in January 2008 as Marketing Manager, leading the businesses Clean Label portfolio. In June 2011 she moved to the Nutrition business to further broaden her market understanding. Laura holds a BSc Hons degree in Environmental and Behavioural Biology from the University of St Andrews, and a Masters degree in Marketing gained in 2002 from the University of Strathclyde. Prior to joining National, Laura worked for 5 years at Abbott Laboratories in both Marketing and Sales functions within their Primary Care, Speciality Care and Clinical Nutrition businesses.
   

Dr. Diederick Meyer studied chemistry with microbiology and biochemistry as majors at the University of Amsterdam. In 1985 he received his PhD at the same university. In that year he also joined Cosun Food Technology Centre (research centre of the Royal Cosun group) as a microbiologist at the Biotechnology Dept. There he was involved with research to optimise industrial fermentations, such as for xanthan production. Since 1997 he works as manager scientific and regulatory affairs for Sensus (business group of Royal Cosun that produces and markets inulin from chicory roots). He is responsible for the Sensus research program to establish the physiological and health effects of FrutafitÒ  inulin and Frutalose® oligofructose. The regulatory aspects connected with the application of FrutafitÒ and Frutalose® in food are also part of his activities.
   

Mr Michel Flambeau (Tereos Syral - France) is head of R&D center for application from Tereos Syral. His has more than 15 years of experience in food science and innovation. Prior to joining Tereos Syral he has been innovation director for a european ice cream business unit and held several functions as R&D manager in new product development and in technology on major chocolate and confectionery brands. He has developed a range of innovative products in chocolate confectionary and ice cream. The Tereos Syral R&D center develops new product and applications for innovative and improved foods, with a team of scientists and food technologists benefiting from the most up to data analytical and pilot technologies.

   

Mr. Pascal Camps, after graduating an MBA course at Nyenrode University in the Netherlands, Pascal joined Perfetti van Melle and followed up his career as managing director for the Dutch largest distributor in confectionery brands Concorp. Since 4 years Pascal is owner of Camps Food BV. A ‘no added nonsense’  distributor in natural sweets & snacks.

   

Ms. Charlotte ter Haar is Regulatory & Food Safety Advisor at Dutch Association of Confectionery & Bakery Industry (VBZ). She joined VBZ in 2006 after having built up experience with the Dutch Food & Grocery Industry Association (FNLI) in the period 2004 - 2006. Charlotte graduated in 1992 from Wageningen University and joined the SuikerUnie company in 1994.