28 selected talent moves and promos in softs and ags.

Nicolas Rueda Latiff is newly installed as CEO of Neumann Gruppe USA. He’s a past GM of Carcafe Colombia and then of Volcafe Brasil, later made to the Senior Leadership Team of Volcafe, and Director for South & North America. He also served as President of Brazilian coffee exporters?council.

Two moves to report at Export Trading Group. Fergus Wilson comes to ETG as Head-Arabica Trading, while Henk van Geurp is made Senior Coffee Trader. Back in 2012/13 Fergus was an Armajaro coffee trader based in Nairobi; after that have come London senior-trader roles with Equatorial Traders and, latterly, Group Sopex. Henk’s arrival at the Dutch arm of ETG in Amstelveen is from 10 years at the Winterthur offices of Volcafe, where he traded robusta and rose to be Head of Emerging Markets.

Energy Trader Vitol?is returning to agriculture trading six years after scaling down their ags business.

Vitol hires Carl Desjardins from Olam as it goes back to trading grain from its Houston office and Geneva HQ.

Carl’s almost seven years with Olam were spent as chief trader for the grains division. At Vitol he’s made Head of Trading-Grains & Oilseeds. BTG Pactual and LDC are other places where Carl has worked in the global grain trade.

With a head office in Ohio and an international trading desk in Lausanne, American agribusiness company, The Andersons Inc, hands Bill Krueger the newly-created role of COO, promoting him from president of trade and processing. Bill’s a past president/CEO of Lansing Trade Group, which The Andersons acquired in 2019, and he has a background in grain merchanting both with Scoular and with Conagra Trade Group.

Ignace Breemer joins Tradin Organic in Amsterdam, becoming Senior Trader-cocoa & sugar, having traded green coffee from Sucden’s Dutch office since early 2021. Before that Ignace had been an Ecom coffee trader in Kampala.?

4 key leadership upgrades at Touton

Among appointments made by Touton to develop and strengthen its leadership team is the upgrading of Antoine DELSART to Director-Cocoa Department, where he will lead trading as well as admin and logistics. Antoine has been with the group for over 10 years, most recently as director of Touton Far East in Singapore. Former cocoa department director Eric Guimberteau becomes Group Deputy MD. His more than 30 years with Touton have included trading cocoa in Singapore in the 1990s and participating in the group’s exploration of grain trading in 2006. Touton Group also names Philippa von Brockdorff (Neipperg) its Head of Touton Specialities GmbH in Hamburg, a promotion after five years in sourcing and sales at the German enterprise. She’s previously traded coffee futures for Hamburg’s Hacofco.

Finally Joseph Larrose , who is Group Sustainability Director, has been promoted to Deputy Group MD. In his new role, beyond sustainability, he is also in charge of supply chain, innovation and communication. Joseph joined the company in 2010 and has since then had various roles focussing on sustainable sourcing.

Head-Sugar International Development is the job title awarded by Raizen in Geneva to Jean-Vincent P. upon hiring him from being head of strategy for Ameropa in Lausanne. Jean-Vincent has also held strategy and BD roles with Wilmar, Sierentz and LDC

With the rebranding of the former Olam Specialty Coffee business, Rob Stephen becomes MD of Covoya Speciality Coffee in the United States while Philip Schluter leads the UK-based team for Covoya covering Europe. Rob has headed the US Specialty Coffee division for Olam since 2015 and is a former senior trader at InterAmerican Coffee. Philip was MD of his family’s East African coffee trading company which Olam acquired in 2016.?

Changes in the front office at Bunge

Next stop is Cairo, where Saad Hagrass is upgraded by Bunge from merchandising specialist to Trader in Mediterranean/global corn. Ten years ago he was an execution co-ordinator in grains for Noble Trading Egypt, before filling a similar vacancy at Cargill and coming to Bunge originally in trade operations.?In Geneva, Ilias Benyahia swaps grains. Although remaining a Trader with the company, it’s now for wheat instead of corn. Ilias is a past senior wheat trader for Cargill in South Africa.

Advancement for Justin Friesz at CHS Inc in Minnesota as he steps up to be Senior Director and leader of the global trade team for soybeans. Until the promotion he’d spent almost four years as co-ordinator of the co-operative’s global soybean trade. In his time at CHS since 2008 Justin has also co-ordinated wheat trade activities and merchandised maize.

Cofco International reports that Helen Xuanyi Song, CFA adds the CFO role to her current duties as executive committee member, VP and strategy/information officer. Originally at China’s Ministry of Agriculture, Helen worked as a lawyer before joining Cofco Group’s strategy division in 2010. Following the group’s acquisitions of Nidera and Noble Agri in 2017, she became chief strategy officer of Cofco International based in Geneva.

In London at food company Ofi, Vikram Upadhyay becomes Head-Market Risk with particular focus on markets for cocoa, coffee, nuts and spices. Vikram once headed trading in soft derivatives for Olam in Dubai before being transferred to a London-based senior cocoa trader position with the group that additionally involved risk management.

Swithun Still is named Commercial Director of Harvest Commodities in Geneva. A former Director of Solaris Commodities and a past pesident of GAFTA (the Grain & Feed Trade Association), Swithun continues to act as a Gafta qualified arbitrator in his spare time.

Rabo strenghtens analytical bench with hires in US and Europe

Rabobank sees Owen Wagner join as the latest U.S. VP/Senior analyst in grains and oilseeds after being based in Raleigh as CEO of the North Carolina soyean producers’ association since 2019. His previous slot had been with agribusiness consultancy LMC International, where he was its senior economist in North America.

Also joining is Robert van der Kooy . He began with ABN AMRO Bank where he discovered his passion for the commodity markets. He moved on to grain analysis at Nidera and further refined those skills with COFCO International before joining Cefetra of Rotterdam as a market analyst in 2018. Robert joins the Utrecht office in an Analyst role for commodity sales with a focus on derivatives.

Gan Kee Lui moves from Singapore to Amsterdam, leaving an assistant manager position in palm oil trading at Wilmar International to become Senior Trader at Cargill Netherlands. Past jobs have included assistant director of Singapore’s monetary authority.?

Newly installed as Junior Trader for Sucden in Singapore, Glen Lim has previously been a trading analyst at CJ International Asia. Most recently he’s been a junior trader with Wilmar International.

Andres Cardena is the new CFO of Columbia Grain International, part of the Marubeni Corporation, having earlier been finance chief and CEO of Attebury Grain. In Cargill operations between 2007 and 2019, Andres was variously a financial controller, audit director and global director of finance and accounting.

For Scoular in Omaha, Sandra D. Hulm is elected VP/GM-pulses and sunflower. Before coming to Scoular in August, Sandra was VP-procurement at Conagra Brands where she also served as a board member of Ardent Mills. Her spell at Conagra followed various roles at ADM, including managing its North America sunflower oil programme.?

Brock Seidl joins the grain merchandising team of Iowa farm co-op Landus as Head of cross-country trade, focusing on the Canadian market. He comes from being domestic trade manager at Farmer’s Business Network and previously was at Gavilon Grain in positions including commodities trader.

South Dakota-based Agtegra Co-operative promotes Travis Antonsen to lead its grain division as SVP-Grain Marketing and head of origination strategy. Various roles for Travis during 13 years at Agtegra have included grain merchandiser, domestic corn trader and director of origination.

Although the newest Green Coffee Trader at Efico, Dorien Van Dun has already amassed over 14 years with the Antwerp company in capacities related mainly to marketing and communications. As a member of the Efico Foundation team since 2013 she’s acted as its PR, but her connection with the coffee trade began earlier, when she produced a Master’s degree thesis on applied economics examining repercussions for the coffee market from the 2008 international financial crisis.

Did you miss...

Our Book Club Friday session we were joined by the Authors of best seller The World for Sale Javier Blas and Jack Farchy .

Watch the replay here