GLOBALG.A.P. has announced that the newly elected GLOBALG.A.P. Board has appointed Guy Callebaut as new chairman and Jim Jefcoate as vice-chairman for a 4-year term.

Guy Callebaut first joined the GLOBALG.A.P. Board in 2012 as a producer/supplier representative. He holds an M.Sc. in economics from the University of Leuven (Belgium) and began his professional career in marketing, working as a key account executive for several advertising agencies. His expertise covers active farming, cooperative marketing–both national and international–and the fruit and vegetable producer cooperatives in Belgium. As vice-chairman of the board of the producer cooperative BelOrta, he coordinates with colleague Board members the overall cooperative marketing strategy at the benefit of all producer members. As an active producer of pears and apples, he is responsible for the general, day-to-day management and the coordination of the production quality management in practice. He also regularly conducts expertise missions in Central Africa and Asia to assist agricultural cooperatives in the introduction of international production standards.

Jim Jefcoate, who is a group technical director at IPL, has been a member of the Board since 2011 as a retailer representative. He received his mandate from Asda, one of the UK’s largest supermarket groups, and from Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, AR, who owns Asda and IPL.    

Recently IPL announced it is in the process of introducing an automated interface linking directly to the GLOBALG.A.P. Database. Jim Jefcoate will be applying this IT experience to help expand GLOBALG.A.P.’s IT capabilities in order to better serve retailers’ supply chain and sourcing management processes.