Danone appoints Argentine Daniel Ordóñez as general manager in Spain

New relief at the head of Danone's Spanish subsidiary, which has its headquarters and main offices on Buenos Aires street in Barcelona. The company has announced the appointment of Daniel Ordóñez as the new general director of the French multinational in the Iberia region, which includes business in Spain and Portugal.

Of Argentine nationality, Ordóñez was until now a senior executive of the group at the Paris headquarters, where he was responsible for the growth strategy (Senior VP Chief Growth Officer) of the dairy and plant-based products division worldwide, a unit that includes both Danone yogurts ---with leading brands such as Activia and Actimel--- and the plant protein brand Alpro.

Ordóñez replaces Paolo Tafuri, an Italian executive who took the reins of the Spanish business in July 2019, replacing Jean-Philippe Paré. Tafuri has been appointed Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Danone in Africa.

In addition to the dairy division, the new chief executive will also be responsible for the bottled water (Font Vella and Lanjarón) and specialized nutrition subsidiaries.

Trained in Argentina, Daniel Ordóñez began his professional career in the Unilever group, where he worked for brands such as Rexona and Lux at the consumer goods multinational's headquarters in Buenos Aires, London, and Sao Paulo. In 2007, he joined Danone and began his career in the group precisely in Barcelona, as a member of the global marketing team for the group's major yogurt brands. He then began a six-year period in Latin America, holding positions of responsibility in Mexico, Uruguay, and Argentina. In his home country, he was president of Danone Waters, until at the end of 2015 he was assigned to the central headquarters in Paris to take charge, first, of the growth strategy for the bottled water business and then of the dairy division.

"After more than a decade at Danone, I face this new stage with energy, ambition, and responsibility. Spain is a priority and iconic market, as it was precisely here that the company was founded more than a hundred years ago. Our goal is to continue this trajectory, in line with this tradition and the positive evolution of the business in the rest of the EU," Ordóñez stated.

With offices in Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon, Danone's Iberian business employs more than 2,000 people and has seven production centers, including yogurt factories and water bottling plants. This year, the company has invested twelve million euros in its Barcelona plant, located in Parets del Vallès, to manufacture plant-based products under the Alpro, Activia, and Oikos brands, which it will sell in Spain and also export to the rest of Europe.