Patrice Marie has been appointed as the Chief Operating Officer for the CFH Division, and assumed his new position in June 2018.
With 26 years of experience working for a multinational FMCG company, British American Tobacco, Patrice has held various Trade Marketing & Distribution, Marketing, General Management and other senior management roles. He has had responsibility over single and cluster of markets at senior management level across 17 countries in the Indian Ocean Islands, Southern, Central and Eastern Africa. His last positions were as General Manager of BAT Angola and General Manager of BAT in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Holder of an MBA Marketing with the University of Leicester, UK, he joined Harel Mallac in June 2018 as COO of the Chemicals, Fertilisers and Hygiene division.
New Challenges
For Patrice Marie, the aim is not to change things that are working but to focus on ‘Must Haves’ and ‘Must Wins’. To address the key challenges that the CFH division is facing and to unleash its full potential, we need to have a second look at our business model on how to become more competitive and lay the foundations for growth. As usual, we will put the client at the forefront of what we do. The focus will also be on making intelligent and responsible use of our resources to improve the environmental impacts of our activities.
Turning Around Businesses
The fertilisers business is highly linked to the sugar industry, which is going through difficult times. Undoubtedly, this has a knock-on effect on the current and future of our fertilisers business, which will be heading in a new direction.