STEMMING FROM AN OPPORTUNITY

We asked CEO Hans Lemm (HL) about his career past, and how he came to work in the forestry industry.

HL: The short and simple answer is “by accident and not by design”. As a young engineering graduate from the Netherlands, I was looking for adventure and aspired to develop an international career and the industry did not matter that much, as a matter of fact I had never even thought of forestry as an industry.

In 2002 I applied for a job in Tanzania following an advert in a newspaper job section that stated: “Wanted: Manager for Chipboard Factory in Tanzania”. I mentioned in my application that I had “Africa experience” and to my great surprise I got the job. I started off as the Operations Manager and after six months was promoted to General Manager of the business.

I stayed with this first company for almost three years and then worked for a couple of different companies in the forest industry in East Africa in a variety of roles increasingly senior and more complex in terms of business.

My last role before Green Resources was as CEO of Africa’s largest teak plantation, a position I held for just over 10 years. Here I had the privilege to manage the transition from plantation development project to forest industry. In many ways this was not too different from my current role although Green Resources, where I joined in April 2019, is significantly larger, more complex and has a much bigger corporate component that needs to be managed.