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.