Biosphere Corporation creates advisory board, introduces ex-head of Kyivstar and Carlsberg in Ukraine Chernyshov
Biosphere Corporation, the largest manufacturer and distributor of household goods and hygiene products in Ukraine, has started creating an advisory board, the first member of which was the ex-president of Kyivstar and the ex-general director of Carlsberg Ukraine Peter Chernyshov, the founder and CEO of the Biosphere corporation, Andriy Zdesenko, said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
"The relevance of the advisory board for Biosphere came at least five years ago. Even then, and maybe even earlier, the corporation had to set up its own board, because Biosphere has become an international company with a fairly serious turnover, working on 20 markets and having production facilities in several of them," he said.
Zdesenko said that Biosphere is already a medium-sized company under European standards: constantly developing, with great ambitions and investments, with powerful vertical integration, with a rather serious block of social responsibility.
According to him, to build and develop such a company, one needs "certain experience, knowledge, wisdom, maturity, which the company did not have."
"In order to move on, to develop according to a different model, we needed new experience and knowledge. And my request was for such an internal advisory board to appear. For people who worked in a large international business and whom we definitely cannot hire to the company (and, probably, there is no point in this), each in their own areas brought their knowledge, experience, energy to the corporation and secured me, as the owner and CEO, from mistakes," the founder and CEO of Biosphere said.
He added that he had been talking with Peter Chernyshov for three years about his participation in the Biosphere board, but the final joint decision to create the advisory board was made after the start of the war.
"Peter is now in the stage where he is auditing and assessing the efficiency and health of the company. He started a project with our sales system, with an assessment of the level of distribution and supply chain, customer service and other key important indicators that allow us to understand how much we control market, the speed of logistics and other important points, despite the war," Zdesenko said, describing Chernyshov's current work on the board.
He added that the ex-head of Kyivstar and Carlsberg Ukraine also evaluates the quality of the company's management and its work in terms of economic indicators: EBITDA, net profit, reserves and helps in attracting strong people.
In turn, Chernyshov identified three main challenges for Biosphere. According to him, the first is to keep the business in the conditions of the falling Ukrainian market: people are leaving Ukraine, prices are rising, and it is difficult for those who remain to buy these products. He explained the difficulties for Biosphere in that its products are mostly "nice to have, but not must to have."
"The second is military problems: missiles are flying, there is no electricity, important and necessary people are being taken into the army," the board member said.
Chernyshov said that the third challenge is the need to create own FMCG business in Europe from scratch – from production to sale – something in which Biosphere had very limited experience before.
Chernyshov said that his three-year contract on the board of Farmak pharmaceutical company has ended, but this experience will also be useful to him at Biosphere, since although both companies are "very different," both are extremely strong in terms of entrepreneurship.
"So far, Peter is the only member of the board: as a man-orchestra, he is an adviser to Biosphere and he has been studying for a month, communicating with people, integrating into processes, arguing, adding power to us. Both Biosphere and I feel part of the confidence that he adds," Zdesenko said.
He said he expects Mario Bauer, former Vapiano WorldWide Vice President for Development, to join the board shortly and be in charge of international marketing, international relations, brand building and B2B and B2C relationships.
"He is very strong in marketing: he allowed Vapiano to build and enter the IPO as a fast dining chain phenomenon. Then he left the company and, together with a group of investors, bought the American brand Curtis Brothers and made it very successful in the European market. He knows the market perfectly," the CEO of Biosphere said, describing the future member of the board.
Speaking about the further expansion of the advisory board, Zdesenko said that he also plans to attract a technical director with competencies in the polymer segment, as the corporation plans to build a biogranule plant in Europe and is introducing many new technological solutions.
The CEO of Biosphere added that he would like to see a human or talent manager advisor as another member of the board.
"Because the selection, motivation of employees, talents in Europe is different from Ukraine," he said.
Zdesenko said that soon he would head the board himself.
"We talked with Peter that during one year my task is to select a new CEO of Biosphere, and my next position will be the chairman of the board, who will help, support the CEO and hold him accountable – this is the development of Biosphere in the future," the founder said.
Biosphere Corporation has been operating in Ukraine for 25 years. Its products are represented in the markets of 30 countries in Europe and Asia. The product portfolio includes more than 2,000 items under 13 trademarks Freken BOK, Smile, Selpak, Vortex, Novita, PRO service, LaiKit, Bambik and others.
The corporation's capacities are represented by four factories with a total production area of 35,000 square meters in Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv and Khmelnytsky regions, production in Ternopil, as well as logistics complexes with an area of 30,000 square meters. Together with the French Groupe Lemoine, Biosphere also owns a plant in Estonia for the production of cotton products with an area of 8,500 square meters.
In addition, the corporation recently acquired the well-known Austrian brand Alufix, one of the Alufix foil and food film factories located in Romania, and four sales offices in European countries.