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