English - Nooteboom Giants on the Road Magazine English - Nr. 3 - 2016 | Page 34
GIANTS ON THE ROAD
Han Rekers, General Manager
Liebherr Nederland
AMBASSADOR OF
NOOTEBOOM
LAST YEAR, AFTER AN EMPLOYMENT OF NO LESS THAN 25 YEARS,
HAN REKERS LEFT HIS JOB AS SALES DIRECTOR AT NOOTEBOOM
TO BECOME GENERAL MANAGER AT LIEBHERR NEDERLAND. IT WAS
A CONSCIOUS CHOICE FOR REKERS, WHO LOOKS BACK WITH
GREAT SATISFACTION ON HIS TIME IN WIJCHEN. “IF I EVER WANTED TO DO SOMETHING ELSE IN MY CAREER IT HAD TO BE NOW.”
He told me he was to retire soon so there would be a vacancy. Would
that be something for me? I thought: if I am going to have a change, now
is the time. Of course I knew Liebherr very well: a great company, in
scale bigger than Nooteboom, and with quite a big overlap in customers.
It felt right, also because I knew that Nooteboom was in good shape
again and totally ready for the future. I would be able to leave them with
an easy mind; at least I did not have to worry about that.”
PROUD
Although Han Rekers said goodbye to Nooteboom almost a year ago,
we catch him using the word ‘we’ several times when he talks about
his former employer. And in his office, at the headquarters of Liebherr
Nederland in Amersfoort, the walls are adorned with a Nooteboom
calendar and an original wooden Nooteboom clock.
This is not really surprising: Nooteboom is the company where Rekers
worked for more than a quarter of a century and where he experienced
highs and lows. Rekers’ career within Nooteboom included various sales
functions: from product manager Multitrailers to Sales Director. “So
much has happened during those 25 years”, says Rekers, looking back. “A
real low point was the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008. This was
the starting point of a turbulent period within Nooteboom, with several
reorganisations and changes of the guard as a consequence. When
Nooteboom emerged from the crisis stronger than ever (around 2013
and 2014) I felt my feet starting to get a bit itchy. What did I, in my late
forties, still want to achieve career-wise? At an exhibition in Paris I bumped into Peter van Acker, then general manager of Liebherr Nederland.
34
After an extensive selection procedure Rekers, who had just arrived in
America for a holiday with his children, received the redeeming phone
call: after a final meeting with the shareholders he was elected the new
General Manager of Liebherr in the Netherlands. “Actually it was perfect
timing: not being in the Netherlands gave me a few weeks to think about
how I was going to break the news. Because as you can imagine it was a
big step to leave a close-knit family business, such as Nooteboom, after
25 year