François Lacombe assumes the general management of Danone in Spain

Danone Iberia, headquartered in Barcelona, has finally announced the name of the company's new general manager, a position that had been vacant since last April, when Argentine Daniel Ordóñez, who had only been in the role for half a year, surprisingly left the company and signed on as a senior executive for the Swedish oat drink brand Oatly. The chosen one to lead the French multinational's business, a yogurt leader, in the Spanish and Portuguese markets is François Lacombe, who until now held the vice presidency of Operations for Danone in Europe.

As is customary, Danone has drawn from its internal talent pool, resorting to its global pool of executives, whom it frequently rotates in both position and country. Once again, a French executive has been chosen, after the two previous general managers were of Argentine and Italian origin. Danone's historic Barcelona subsidiary —which gave rise to the listed French multinational— has not been led by a Spanish executive since 2004, when the tandem formed by Javier Robles and Jordi Constans came to an end. From that year on, Robles maintained the presidency, but the day-to-day operations and all executive functions were progressively assumed by the new general manager, Jérôme Boesch, who led the company until 2017. When Robles retired in 2015, Danone opted to eliminate the dual position of president and general manager of Iberia and concentrated all functions in a single executive.

However, since Boesch's departure, the general management of Danone Iberia has been in a certain interim situation, as four executives have passed through the company in five years: Jean-Philippe Paré (2017), Paolo Tafuri (2019), Daniel Ordóñez (2021), and now François Lacombe (2022). A graduate of the National Agronomic Institute of Paris-Grignon and trained at the London Business School, Lacombe is an expert in rural development and worked for the European Union in Benin.

He joined Danone 25 years ago, with a career that has led him to perform various functions in countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Algeria. "I take on the role with an enormous sense of pride that Spain is the cradle of Danone, where the journey that has led us to be a leading company in providing health through food truly began to take shape," said the new general manager.

The arrival of Lacombe in Barcelona coincides with Danone's decision to install a hub for technological development and data analysis at its headquarters on Buenos Aires street. The center will have an initial team of 35 professionals of different nationalities and its mission will be to drive the group's digital transformation in the Iberian Peninsula, although its developments are also expected to be exported to other international subsidiaries of the French food giant.

Investment of more than 20 million in Parets del Vallès

In parallel, the group, owner of well-known brands such as Activia, Font Vella, Lanjaron, Actimel and Danonino, celebrated this week the 40th anniversary of its Catalan factory, located in Parets del Vallès, which in 2021, after an investment of 12 million euros, converted into a hybrid plant where it produces both yogurts made with milk and plant-based products (oat and coconut), which it markets under the Alpro brand.

The Parets center has received an additional investment of four million this year to also manufacture soy-based products and will allocate nearly seven million euros more until 2023 to incorporate new machinery and other actions such as a new robotic warehouse. 160 people work in Parets and three million yogurts and plant-based products (already 15% of the total) are manufactured daily under the Activia, Oikos, Vitalínea and Alpro brands, with more than 130 different references. 23% of the production is exported, mainly to Portugal, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

"Since its inception, Parets has been a global benchmark, being the first hybrid profile plant since 2021. Today it is a world reference center for fermented coconut-based plant products, but also one of the plants responsible for producing dairy yogurts in high-value segments such as probiotics with Activia," highlighted Laia Mas, Director of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability at Danone Iberia.