Search 
Search Jürgen Matern added “There are many more challenges ahead, and we look forward to building on our existing work in global markets and across the entire supply chain, to continuing to build relationships between the private and public sector, and to expanding awareness of GFSI and measuring its global impact.
PARIS, 18th February 2010 – Jürgen Matern, Vice President, Strategic Quality Management at Metro AG, to take over Chairmanship of the Global Food Safety Initiative Board of Directors.
The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), managed by The Consumer Goods Forum, announced during the closing session of the Global Food Safety Conference in Washington D.C. the appointment of Jürgen Matern, Vice President, Strategic Quality Management at Metro AG to succeed JP Suarez, Wal-Mart as its Board Chairman. Jürgen will take over the leadership of GFSI effective immediately.
Commenting on the appointment, outgoing Chairman JP Suarez said: “The GFSI Board is delighted that Jürgen has agreed to take over this role, which occurs at an important time for GFSI. The initiative has gained tremendous momentum over the last few years in many parts of the world. GFSI still has a key role to play in effectively managing the adoption of GFSI recognised schemes by building awareness among key stakeholders in the food industry to demonstrate the efficiencies associated with having a set of globally accepted food safety schemes.”
Jürgen Matern will become the fifth Chairman of the Global Food Safety Initiative.
Jürgen Matern
Having completed a Food Technology Engineering degree, Jürgen was responsible for Research & Development / Quality Assurance at Quaker Oats and Royal Canin in Germany from 1981 to 1989. In 1990 he joined Metro Germany to set up Quality Assurance (QA) for the food business in Germany. In the following years he developed quality assurance in Metro to an international department with almost 500 engineers and specialists in 32 countries, covering the whole food and non-food business and assuring fulfillment of legal and company requirements in the stores.
Metro Group
METRO Group is one of the largest and most international retailing companies worldwide. 290,000 employees from 150 nations work at around 2,400 outlets in 32 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.
GFSI BOARD OF DIRECTORS
AEON GLOBAL SCM, Japan
BERTIN, Brazil
CARGILL, USA
CARREFOUR, France
CHINA RESOURCES VANGUARD, P.R. China
COCA-COLA, USA
DANONE, France
HANNAFORD, USA
HORMEL FOODS, USA
KRAFT FOODS, USA
KROGER, USA
MCDONALD’S, USA
METRO GROUP, Germany
MIGROS, Switzerland
ROYAL AHOLD, Netherlands
TYSON FOODS, USA
WAL-MART, USA
About The Consumer Goods Forum
The Consumer Goods Forum is an independent global parity-based Consumer Goods network. It brings together the CEOs and senior management of around 650 retailers, manufacturers, service providers and other stakeholders across 70 countries.
The Forum was created in June 2009 by the merger of CIES – The Food Business Forum, the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) and the Global CEO Forum. The Consumer Goods Forum is governed by its Board of Directors, which includes an equal number of manufacturer and retailer CEOs and chairpersons. Forum member companies have combined sales of EUR 2.1trillion.
The Forum provides a unique global platform for thought leadership, knowledge exchange and networking between retailers, manufacturers and their partners on collaborative, non-competitive issues. Its strength lies in the privileged access it offers to the key players in the sector as well as in the development and implementation of best practices along the value chain.
It has a mandate from its members to develop common positions on key strategic and practical issues affecting the consumer goods business and to focus on non-competitive collaborative process improvement. With its headquarters in Paris and its regional offices in Washington, D.C., Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai, The Consumer Goods Forum serves its members throughout the world.
