David Boulanger is the Executive Vice President & CSCO at Arla Foods, having previously been SVP Operations at Danone in Amsterdam. He has spent his career specialising in the food & beverages sector, at companies such as Kraft Foods and Nutricia Medical Nutrition.

What are the projects in sustainability that you are embarking on and what do they entail?

Firstly, we are committed to follow the 1.5°C trajectory that was set by the Paris Agreement a few years ago; which is a significant reduction of operations by 2030.

We also have an ambition in Arla Foods to become carbon neutral by 2050. This is much more than our operations; this is the total end-to-end supply chain, including our farmers.

The farms are probably the most important carbon emitters, so we need to completely reinvent the farm of the future. This will include how we feed the cows, manage the whole of the farm, use the land and fertilising.

Going into new technologies, like producing bio gas from our farms, using electricity, tapping into potential future technology and carbon sequestration, which is to put the gas back into the ground.

That’s an insight into the toolbox we have in order to reach this long-term commitment.

How do you feel that the dairy or FMCG industry has changed in the past ten years?

Like many other FMCGs, we have experienced a very significant transformation over the past ten years. I started my career 25 years ago and I have seen an acceleration of the change in the food industry and FMCGs.

Consumers are changing; they are becoming increasingly more demanding and we have moved away from the one-size-fits-all. But a lot of products are more fit for purpose or fit for consumer needs - you see an extension of the ranges of products that FMCG can bring to various consumers across the world.

The second thing is that sustainability is becoming physically important, so it is now a fact that consumers start to choose their product based not only on consumer behaviour, but also the impact on the planet.

The third thing is about digitalisation.

There are many applications of digitalisation; we start to see e-commerce as a growing channel, we start to see many consumers ordering more and more through e-commerce and through home deliveries.

We have digital now in everything we do. Our dairies are running differently now than they were three or four years ago, with new technologies, new systems, robotisation, etc. We use artificial intelligence for future planning and numerate a lot of things that digital has already brought, and will bring in the future to conform and continue to conform the dairy/FMCG industry.

I think COVID has accelerated a lot of the transformation that we’ve seen, especially on digital. The Ukraine war is also bringing a new set of challenges.

What we see is global supply chains have become weaker, so change is being more local, original, being more resilient in our business model. These also are the next challenges of the future for many FMCGs.

We have started to see a war for talent - that is also one of the major challenges that we will face in the future.

With your background, what advice would you give to Plant Managers or Operations Directors looking to make that next step in their career?

I think as a Chief Supply Chain Officer, the big difference between a Plant Director or an Operations Director moving to a more executive role, is to be able to take a step back from our functional agenda and to look at opportunities from a total business perspective.

I think the biggest advice I would give is to learn how businesses are run outside the Supply Chain functions, to contribute, to co-create the solutions that would make the business more successful in the future.

The Chief Supply Chain Officer in a business is someone who will contribute to add value in the future; rather than lead the functions only based on reducing costs. There is a limit to what you can do to optimise your costs, but there is so much you can do to create more value in Supply Chain.

Most of the time, when we are an Operations Director or Plant Director, we tend to look at our perimeter only, but we need to look at it from an end-to-end perspective.

With your career that spanned across Europe, what do you think are the benefits of having an international career with flexibility?

We have learned how to manage business judicially during COVID-19, but leaders need to be honest. This has brought a lot of positivity; you don’t travel, you don’t use this time travelling and waiting for planes and so on.

Being realistic; we have not yet found the right balance between being completely digital and humanising the work as well. We need to find the right balance between being able to do everything remotely, which is great from an efficiency standpoint. However, creativity and solutions need the physical touchpoint, especially when you welcome new people inside the company.

Coming back to your question, when you are an international company, you need also to be able to sense the different cultures.

You need to have been able to travel to different places - every country has its bits of specialisms in terms of culture and so on, and the way you connect with people makes it important to do that.

If you don’t have an international career, you miss something.

What do you think is the most important soft skill for leaders, especially emerging from the pandemic?

During the pandemic, we realised it was vital to sustain our supply chain with people coming to work and being motivated and engaged. At the same time, we were managing the crisis and being very efficient in our operations.

Caring for people was equally important, ensuring first the basic needs of safety and health, because COVID was at play. At the beginning, we didn’t know if it was dangerous to go to work.

It is not only about physical health; it’s about mental health and how you cope with uncertainty. Leaders need to ensure that employees are able to deliver their tasks as we can have dramatic consequences on the mental health of some people, and you need to be alert to that. 

You need to take the time to check in and check if your team is onboard, if you want to deliver. That’s the soft skill that, with the pandemic and now the war in Ukraine, has become increasingly important as a leader, caring for people.

How will the digital transformation change the role in Operations?

The digital transformation is enabling things that we were thinking impossible in the past, which are now possible through technologies. With several aspects, it brings a lot of transparency across our value chain. Before, it was difficult - in the future, everything will be transparent; it opens a lot of possibilities in the way we plan and address the different plans in supply chains.

The second thing is we already have more data than a human being can really analyse. Digital technology will help us to screen, analyse and enable us to extract the right information to perform better in business.

This new digital technology will make small runs probably at the same cost than big runs, because now we find new technologies that are much more flexible and much more efficient. There is a huge opportunity to rebuild and rethink manufacturing of the future to be able to match consumer needs, without increasing or decreasing our competitiveness.

What other challenges do you think await Arla Foods and how do you hope to overcome them?

There are three major challenges: our big challenge is the sustainability agenda. We have a huge one on the digitalisation of our operations, and probably the third one is on the people side, how to keep on attracting talent.

What would be your tips for achieving a work-life balance?

This is a very difficult and very necessary topic. There is a need to take time when you need it and to enable to switch off when you are under pressure so not to become overwhelmed.

To do that, you need to empower your teams; you cannot do everything yourself. The more senior you become, you need to trust your team to take the right decisions and to empower them. Do not try to control everything, it’s not possible.

What can you tell us about Arla Foods’ approach to Diversity & Inclusion and creating that culture that people want to work within?

Diversity & Inclusion is something we take very seriously at Arla. We are launching different initiatives for both our leaders and employees on D&I - we will have some clear ambition, clear goals.

Diversity is not the objective. For me, inclusion - what we call belonging - is really the ultimate goal.

It’s useless to recruit diversity, it is counterproductive; I am fully convinced that diversity is more efficient than teams that are not diverse. If you don’t manage to create the right sense of belonging between different individuals, you have a counterproductive situation.

We focus very much on inclusion and belonging - how does it affect the hiring process?

Every time we recruit, there is the job description, but for me what is equally important is the person behind the CV. We have a very thorough method to evaluate candidates through personality profile, this enables us to remove the bias that gender and origin bring. We look at the personality versus how it could fit in the Arla culture, rather than other characteristics.

There are many dimensions that you need to consider when building a team. I tend to pay very specific attention to that, sometimes successfully, sometimes we could do better.

Thank you to David for speaking to our Finance & Accountancy recruitment team in the Netherlands, led by Hannah Mallia and David Harper.

Views and opinions contained within our Executive Interviews are those of the interviewee and not views shared by EMEA Recruitment.