In The Office
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
Quality and
Sustainability
With global concerns about rising demand and overfishing, J.P. Klausen &
Co. is doing its part to ensure the highest quality of produce while working
to achieve ecological harmony.
Images by Peter Baastrup
E
stablished in 1990 in
New Zealand before
relocating to Denmark
in 1993, J.P. Klausen
& Co. has grown into a
truly transnational company, with
products sourced from around the
world and a customer base that
spans the Middle East, Europe,
Asia, and Africa.
Founder and managing director
Jens Klausen sat down with The
CEO Magazine Europe to discuss
the genesis and future of the
company as well as the
complexities associated with the
seafood industry.
The CEO Magazine Europe:
What prompted the decision to
launch J.P. Klausen & Co.?
Tools from one of the
harshest climates in
the world: Antarctica
The InterContinental Bali
Queen Mary 2
MR PORTER’s Essentials
Self-Doubt
and the CEO
Diet and ageing
Listen
and
Learn
Jens: It was not on the back of a
well-thought-through business
plan; it was more for my own
personal desire to start up a
company myself, to be an
entrepreneur, and started from
what I had achieved in New
Zealand when I lived there. When
I arrived back in Europe, I looked
at various avenues within the food
industry which I felt I had the
capacity to deliver on. Then,
seafood came along as a good
possibility, so I pushed into that.
As featured in
The CEO Magazine Europe
For more info visit
theceomagazine.com
Lessons in leadership and innovation from
GN ReSound’s President and CEO Lars Viksmoen
We started up with a few of the
exporters out of New Zealand and
had some good success with them.
From there, a business model
started to evolve, which was based
on personal relationships and
helping smaller companies—like a
fishing company based in the tail
end of Argentina—to knock on the
door of European customers. I saw
the possibility to come to them
and explain that we have a
platform and suggested they use
that and work on an open-book
system. I gained a lot of trust
through those personal
relationships, but from then on our
model evolved and became the
backbone of J.P. Klausen & Co.
Since establishing the
business, what have been the
greatest challenges?
Financing is probably a big
challenge, because in this industry,
you will often find that a trawling
company needs a lot of cash
before they go sailing; they might
have three or four trawlers that
need to be equipped, which means
they might need cash advances. A
lot of them are asking for part
payments up-front in order to
equip themselves, which can be
an issue.
There are a lot of smaller
challenges along the way, and a lot
of regulations. You can say that it
turns both ways since it’s a
challenge internally, but it’s also an
asset when you talk to customers
because, if I use the same example
of a small fishing company in
southern Argentina, how can they
possibly handle all the
documentation requirements to
move their products into the US or
Europe? That has been a
challenge, but it has been turned
around to become an asset to the
company. To make a smooth
transaction of moving fish from
one part of the world to another
today is full of regulations. The
whole exercise of doing that is one
of our assets today, but it’s
certainly an ongoing challenge for
us to cope with.
What was the motivation
behind your company’s move
to Denmark?
It was definitely to get closer to
the customers. I was starting to get
a few customers when I was based
in New Zealand, but I was too
close to the production side and I
wanted to be closer to the
customers. Today, that is one of
our assets—the customer base that
we have. Producers can sit around
Nudie Jeans’ Palle Stenberg • Crocs’ Vince Gunn • Dagens Nyheter’s Gunilla Herlitz
theceomagazine.com
The CEO Magazine Europe - March 2014
63.
the world, but we sit very closely
to the customers. That has been
the way we’ve set the business up
today, meaning we have sales
offices in different parts of the
world so our sales staff are close to
our customers and understand
their needs. We’re quite far from
the producers, but we have an
ongoing agenda to go and see
them, talk to them in depth about
our aims and their wishes, and
then make the two come together.
How does your organisation
ensure staff alignment and
transparency throughout
the business?
It’s a difficult question, because it’s
not as if we formulated a model
that was based on Jack Welch or
any other genius that I read about;
it’s more a question of trying to be
extremely flexible and having a
very flat organisation. In principle,
you could say that we equip our
sales staff, or our staff generally, to
be able to act very independently.
We ask them to be equipped to
discuss with their customers and
their suppliers more or less 24/7,
meaning they have all of the
equipment, tablets, smartphones,
and so on, so they’re hooked up at
home. They are of course rewarded
for that with a lot of independence.
“Jens, congratulations on the recognition you
are receiving for your contribution to the
seafood industry internationally.
We truly cherish the friendship and working
relationship forged between our two
companies as a result of your efforts
over the past 22 years.”
– On behalf of Charles Shadbolt and everyone
at Independent Fisheries Ltd, New Zealand.
www.indfish.co.nz
How does J.P. Klausen
collaborate with its suppliers to
ensure success?
There are, of course, all the modern
means like Skyping, various
meeting forms, and so on, but there
is still a lot of personal contact. It
requires a lot of faith and trust in
the business that we conduct
because you compare to other
businesses and say, ‘We put in an
order for plastic bottles’, for
example, and know that at the end
of the production cycle that that’s
more or less what you’re going to
get. However, in the fishing
business, you still have to accept
that it’s a hunting industry. So you
go out and hope to catch a cod, but
you might be filling your vessel
with herring instead, so there’s a lot
of confidence and trust in trying to
solve these issues when they come
up in the seafood industry.
theceomagazine.com
“We believe in
what we’re
saying with
regard to
sustainability.
We believe that
we want to
remain in
business for
many years to
come and do
what we can to
ensure that.”
- Jens Klausen
We like our suppliers to see us as
their extended arm. We’re a
marketing company that they
basically own; they’ve hired us to
perform on their behalf, so we
have meetings with a lot of them.
We go out to North America, New
Zealand, South Africa, South
America, and so on to sit together
and plan for the next year. We’re
very deep into the planning with
our partners. It’s not just a
question of what they’re going to
produce and how we can sell that;
we try to use the strength that we
have coming from the customers,
talking to the customers, finding
out what they would like to see
over the next six to 12 months.
What steps has your organisation
taken to guarantee the
sustainable supply of produce?
There are some organisations like
the Marine Stewardship Council
where I’ve been an active member
for a very long time. That has a
large focus on sustainability in the
biomass, which is really where this
organisation has a focus. We are
actively engaged in that because
it’s also securing our own jobs for
the future, so we’re active on that
front and supporting that.
If there is overfishing in some
areas then we try to stay away
from that. It has something to do
with our own gut feeling about
what the industry is and where we
want to be and what sort of image
we want to have. We believe in
what we’re saying with regard to
sustainability. We believe that we
want to remain in business for
many years to come and do what
we can to ensure that.
What does the future hold for
J.P. Klausen?
I think there’s a huge future,
actually. If you look at the world,
we see a fast-growing population;
we’re now around seven billion
and will soon be around nine.
Another more interesting statistic
to look at is the middle class,
where you have much more
explosive growth, which is going
something like 1.7 billion today,
2.9 in 10 years, and 4.7 in 20
years. That’s exactly the customer
base that we’re looking for: the
middle class. As soon as a country
goes from poverty to having a
decent middle-class population,
they’re seeking seafood. We
believe we have a huge future
with our platform and our
knowledge in the industry. So we
will be looking globally, spreading
ourselves more globally, and
moving into new markets like
Brazil, India, Nigeria, and so on. I
see a bright future for us.
The company has been through
several changes over its life, so
we are well prepared for the
future. In 2006, I realised J.P.
Klausen & Co [JPK] was not able
to satisfy all our suppliers with
access for foodservice and retail
products as JPK is mainly focused
on bulk supply. This led to a
merger of the company with a
foodservice and retail-focused
business called Nordic Seafood in
Denmark. The new constellation,
called Nordic Group, was then
bought by Nippon Suisan of
Japan in 2010. Today, the
company is a part of a worldwide
seafood company, opening up for
wider global access.
The CEO Magazine Europe - March 2014
65.