Villaume Kal Joins NIZO as New CEO

Mr. Kal brings more than 20 years of pharmaceutical, food and contract research experience. Before joining NIZO food research, Mr. Kal spent three years at Darling Ingredients as CEO of Rousselot, the global market leader in gelatin for pharmaceutical and food applications. Previously, he held various management and executive positions at Royal DSM NV with a focus on ingredients for the global pharmaceutical, infant nutrition and food industries. A Dutch native, Mr. Kal has lived and worked in a number of countries. He brings to NIZO an extensive track record of driving improved business performance, change management and implementation of strategic initiatives focused on operational excellence and innovation. Mr. Kal holds a MSc in Bio-organic Polymers from Leiden University.

 

His predecessor Ad Juriaanse, who was CEO of NIZO food research since 1995, retired at the end of July 2016. Over the past 21 years Dr. Juriaanse successfully led NIZO’s transformation from a scientific institute for the Dutch dairy industry to an independent commercial contract research organization for the global food and health industries. In recognition of NIZO’s strong market position and expertise, Gilde Healthcare joined NIZO as a major shareholder in March 2016 to facilitate NIZO’s long term growth as a center for innovative R&D services, new product concepts and process innovations.

 

Mr. Kal is looking forward to starting as NIZO’s new CEO. He strongly believes in its growth potential: “Research in health and food are converging. The pharmaceutical industry is looking at the impact of food components, while the food industry is building more expertise on the health effects of its products.
Therefore, companies increasingly rely on areas that fit NIZO’s expertise, for example in protein, microbiome and related big-data analytics. As a result, there will be ample opportunities to build our future growth. NIZO is one of the few companies worldwide that has the expertise to integrate food and health, and that operates a state-of-the-art processing center to actually realize such innovations.”