José Luis Sáiz: a high-altitude mountaineer to revive Bimbo

Bimbo, the most famous bread manufacturing company in the world and on whose vast business empire the sun does not set, in the hands of the Mexican family saga of the Servitje, signed in 2020 for the first time in its centenary history a Spanish general manager for manage its Iberian subsidiary. This is José Luis Sáiz, until then CEO of Grupo Pascual.

With operations in thirty countries, the food giant is one of the leaders in the ranking of the sector with a presence in much of America and Western Europe, as well as in China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey, among other countries. . It sells more than 13,000 products, including sweets and savory snacks. In 1945 it started with 34 employees. It currently generates more than 100,000 jobs and a business that exceeds 15,000 million dollars a year.

Chocolates, cookies, candies, milk… And now bread. The CEO of Bimbo Iberia (València, 1968) has a brilliant career in the field of mass consumption. He is fond of cross-country sports and the high tops of mountains. José Luis Sáiz held positions of responsibility in other companies in the agri-food industry such as Cadbury, Kraft Foods and Mondélez. Father of four children, the top executive of the well-known brand arrived at a time when Bimbo wanted to bake more bread in the old continent.

The appointment of this tall athlete, an expert in relaunching brands, has meant a significant change in Bimbo Iberia. For a decade, he had always chosen expatriate Mexican executives as CEOs. The first was Manuel González Guzmán, who dealt with the integration of the subsidiary and led the purchase of Panrico. He was replaced by Fernando Lerdo de Tejada, grandson of Lorenzo Servitje, one of the founders, whose bakeries arose from the impulse of a group of Spanish emigrants who arrived in Mexico.

marketing expert

The Valencian executive has a master’s degree in marketing and sales from the ESIC Business & Marketing School and another postgraduate degree from the IESE Business School-University of Navarra.

The bread multinational maintains that it is committed to an executive “with a strong commitment to results, focusing on the client and creating work environments where people are the priority.” And it is that Bimbo has had problems in Spain since it completed the acquisition of Panrico in 2016 (the former owner of Donuts in Spain). Then the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) forced him to get rid of the bread of the integrated firm, as well as a series of assets that weighed down his operating account. Since then, Bimbo has had to deal with heavy losses in Spain and Portugal. In fact, it has carried out around thirty capital increases.

Size does matter

In search of profitability, the firm in the hands of Bakery Iberian Investments, the group’s parent company in Spain, recognizes that size does matter. That is why it recently bought two Grupo Siro factories with which it began to produce Mercadona’s sliced ​​bread. Sales in Europe grew at a double-digit rate thanks to the incorporation of those centers in Paterna (Valencia) and Medina del Campo (Valladolid).

During Sáiz’s stage at the head of the company, Bimbo has limited the sales of new products to the Juan Roig chain, something that the National Commission of Markets and Competition demanded. The Bimbo Group bought the aforementioned packaged bread factories from Siro, a Mercadona supplier. But it has stopped selling new bread products under its own brand to the supermarket chain as part of the commitments reached for the acquisition of the aforementioned Grupo Siro factory in Paterna.

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Concerned about improving the management of human resources in the company, one of its main assets, with José Luis Sáiz at the head of Bimbo Iberia, the company has just been recognized as one of the Top Employers 2022 companies in Spain. The company believes that this shows the organization’s commitment to improving the working world of its employees through excellent human resource policies and people management.