In a first for Dole Asia Holdings Pte. Ltd., Barbara Guerpillon has been appointed Head of Dole Ventures across both packaged foods and its fresh businesses. Based in Singapore, the global strategic role is designed to enable profitable business growth through start-up led innovations and the creation of entrepreneurial networks worldwide, all to support The Dole Promise with its ambitious goals in nutrition, sustainability and the creation of shared value.
Pier Luigi Sigismondi, President of Dole Packaged Foods, LLC, says Ms Guerpillon’s talent and experience will bring a significant boost to Dole’s drive to transform its business in line with The Dole Promise. “We have given ourselves five years to deliver on our ambitious goals. These include providing sustainable nutrition for a billion people, the elimination of processed sugar from our products, zero fruit loss from our farms, zero emissions and zero fossil-based packaging.”
“Each of those goals is heroic, but we believe each is possible, as long as we keep our eyes, ears and doors open to people with the smart ideas and innovations that can move us quickly forward. Barbara has a real talent for moving great ideas and entrepreneurs through a disciplined innovation pipeline and we are very excited to have her on our team at the helm of Ventures.
Christian Wiegele, President Dole Asia Fresh, said, “This is an important appointment across both our Fresh and Packaged businesses, reflecting our ambition to partner with innovators, and to open up opportunities for immense evolution as we find significant ways to continue to make our business a force for good. One of the venture spaces I am personally excited about is Agri-tech, which I believe can significantly contribute to The Dole Promise we made earlier this year.”
“Barbara, in her role, will also work very closely with Johann Albano, who we recently promoted as Innovation Lead for our Asia Fresh business.”
Ms Guerpillon brings to Dole a strong track record with the Unilever Foundry, which connected corporate innovation, entrepreneurship and technology to accelerate innovation and effectively pilot new technologies and product innovations. During her tenure she delivered 120 projects with start-ups resulting in 25 pilots including nine product innovations, three retail Innovations and four direct-to-consumer pilots.
Ms Guerpillon says Dole’s clear signal is that it is open for innovation, with its planned Sunshine for All Investment Fund an example of Dole’s willingness to work with innovators, start-ups and progressive partners to help deliver on The Dole Promise.
“Our message is simple. We believe in the power of partnerships and we are seriously in the place of working with start-ups to live up to our Promise. I agree the goals are ambitious, but I have yet to meet leaders who lacked ambition. We bring decades of experience in food production, nutritional science, packaging, supply chain logistics and fast-moving consumer goods, so our ability to fund, run and evaluate pilots will, I believe, be very attractive to the rising generations of smart thinkers. We want to hear from both investors and start-ups around the world” said Ms Guerpillon.
