Today is my 6th anniversary as President of Vulkan do Brasil

 Good morning everybody here in my blog. Today is a very important and really exciting day for me because exactly 6 years ago I started my job as President of Vulkan do Brasil. 

In Germany we have a proverb saying, that for Your anniversary You don`t need to invite guests, because all those, who are aware of it and want to congratulate You, will anyhow show up by themselfes. In this sence I take the freedom to enjoy this beautiful day working @ my home office in our house in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo. Even the wheather here is bright today!

 It took me approximately five seconds, to look up on my iphone, that September 17th, 2014, when I came to Vulkan do Brasil`s factory in Itatiba in the beautiful and calm interior of the state of Sao Paulo for the first time, was a wednesday. 

A few weeks before this I had come over with the owners of our meanwhile more than 130 years old German - familly held in the 4th generation – company, to start on my new job as President of the globally acting Vulkan Group`s Brazilian subsidiary on January 1st, 2015. But due to certain urgencies, it became very important for Vulkan and for me, to speed this up. 

Fortunately my former employer, the also globally acting Heat Exchangers division of the German GEA Group, agreed to my proposal, to let me continue as Managing Director of their Brazilian subsidiary in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo, and accepted, that I signed contract as the new President of Vulkan do Brasil, working half a day for each of the two Brazilian companies as Managing Director from then on until the end of 2014. This was a perfect win-win for both companies and for me. GEA found the necessary time for searching my successor, Vulkan had me available immediately and I could get started on the restructuring process at Vulkan do Brasil without anybody else getting involved locally.

And this was logistics wise very easy for me to accomplish, because during this time I still lived in an appartment in the city of Jundiai, Sao Paulo, exactly 30 minutes away – but in opposite directions – from both companies, GEA Heat Exchangers in Franco da Rocha and Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba. Thus I could even enjoy lunch at home together with my familly. 

My decision, to leave GEA Heat Exchangers after almost 4 highly active and successful years, was due to the fact, that the GEA group had just sold it`s worldwide heat exchangers division (56 production sites, 1.5 billion Euro turnover) to a private equity fund and I had my strong doubts with respect to the future of our Brazilian plant, although 2014 – after several years of negative results and a deep restructuring process – had been a fantastic business year for us at Franco da Rocha. But at that time the whole Brazilian oil & gas industry was breaking together and our main customer Petrobras was deeply involved in massive corruption scandals which froze overnight their billionairy investment projects for the huge new refineries and petrochemical complexes under construction in Rio de Janeiro (Comperj) and Pernambuco (Suape).

 At Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba new, big challenges knowingly were waiting for me from the first moment over there on and I really appreciated this great opportunity, to rebuilt this wonderful - meanwhile 45 years old - company, to set up a strong new management team, to restructure the company completely and – always together with my colleagues at our headquarters in Herne, Germany, and our colleagues at all other globally distributed sister plants and sales subsidiaries – to develop several new strategies for survival and the generation of competitivity, sustainable growth and profitability of our company.

The 2 lower pictures show my presentation to our employees on September 17, 2014 and our new management team set up at Vulkan do Brasil until the end of 2014, the picture of our factory has been taken about 3 years ago after the final conclusion of the restructuring and on the upper picture appears our management team at the end of 2019. As You can see, most of our Directors continue the same as when we started back ago in September 2014.

 On that wednesday, September 17th, my American Vulkan colleague Thomas Lehner, Global Production Director, had invited me to present myself for the first time time to all the employees of Vulkan do Brasil. And for sure all of them were curious to see and hear me for the first time. We had a very nice event. Our employees were all standing on the yard in front of our Lokring production building when Thomas presented me and when I directed myself for the first time to all these wonderful people. 

The first day at a new company is always naturally exciting for all involved and on that ocasion I gave my new colleagues and employees an overview of my career and management experiences at different companies in Europe, Mexico and Brazil with the intention, to make them relax a little bit and to create some initial trust, that I would contribute strongly to finding good solutions for a better future of our company during the obviously quickly upcoming very difficult political, economical and industrial crisis in Brazil. 

 After the speech to all employees I visited the factory and all offices and I held my first meeting with the directors of all departments for presenting each other personally and for a first quick discussion about the general situation of the company and the challenges, which we were facing at that moment. 

When I arrived at home in the evening, I had a very good initial idea of our company and its situation and I was very happy, that – no matter all obviously and abundantly existing challenges - there obviously were so many highly qualified, experienced and motivated employees on all different organisation levels. 

My initial sensation and conviction was, that this company was just another juwel, which – once polished strongly – would develop bright brilliance, which in the end after 3 very hard years finally came true and which makes all of us at Vulkan do Brasil so much happy and proud today.

Originally I wanted to spend this day in our factory in Itatiba, but - because of my today`s agenda full with consecutive national and international conferences and online events - I finally decided, to better stay at home in our house in Vinhedo today and to work from out of my home office. But next monday I`ll meet some of my colleagues at our company and I`ll definitely have my next visit to our beautiful factory there.

Have a great day full with lots of fun and success. See You back here again in my block for my next post during the next week.