Improving an agri-food industrial site before its takeover, with interim management

One of our clients, a French group with a subsidiary in poultry production for agri-food companies, called on our services to assist the director of an industrial site in the context of the recovery and sale of one of its sites.

The factory achieves an annual turnover of €50 million, produces 28,000 tonnes of liquid eggs per year and has a total of 95 employees.

The social context was particularly tense following the sudden death of one of the employees, acts of harassment, the global health situation and a cyberattack.

These events caused concern among the teams and significant stress for the site manager, leading to difficulties in managing the staff, prey to uncertainty about their future since the group was looking for a buyer.

In this situation, Yvan Monnier, interim manager, specializing in crisis management in an industrial environment, intervened. Its original mission was to deploy the Job Protection Plan before the takeover of the company.

Upon arrival, Yvan took charge of restoring the social context to improve the progress of the PSE. To do this, he was particularly close to the team leaders of the three production lines to listen to their demands and offer them new processes. This method allowed him to win a 2-month reprieve on the PSE and to obtain a takeover proposal without dismissal.

Thanks to these new processes and the remotivation of the teams, productivity has increased by 20%, which has made it possible to compensate for financial losses and to sell the company under better conditions.

The success of this transition management mission in an agri-food factory lies in particular in the leeway left to the Transition Manager. The objective of an interim manager is to bring a fresh eye and new processes. This significant autonomy allowed Yvan to put common sense and new working methods back into the factory in a very short time, while preserving relations with the employees.

Calling on interim management is a solution of last resort for many companies: the recruitment of an interim manager is done urgently and for a predefined period of time, with important objectives and challenges. Thanks to his operational and managerial expertise, with no learning curve necessary, the interim manager provides solutions to meet these challenges and ensure the sustainability of the company.