De Heus Nijkerk plant in the Netherlands
Yanne Boloh
De Heus Animal Nutrition's new CEO Gabor Fluit trained as a banker — and used even to be one before Co and Koen De Heus asked him to join their Dutch family business with the aim of developing its activities in Vietnam. It was in 2008, and De Heus didn’t produce any feed in the country at the time but was about to buy its first factory there.
“When I joined De Heus, it was because I knew Vietnamese language, which is the native tongue of my wife, and ways in Vietnamese business,” Fluit said. “I had no initial knowledge of agriculture or feed, and after some training in the Netherlands, we flew to Vietnam. The initial plan was for us to come back to the Netherlands after two or three years, but it has been much longer than that.”
