International

Internationally-minded from the start

Henk Kolenbrander was already internationally minded when he was a student. He never left that track.

For the American chemical company Chemours (formerly part of DuPont) Henk Kolenbrander took part in an international steering committee, with strategic tasks in the field of supply chain management. In order to further sharpen his vision, Henk took the initiative to contact the American board of the company. Why did he do that?
‘An executive in Delaware, at the head office of a global company, of course has no idea who a certain interim manager in the Netherlands is. If you want to talk to one of them you will always need to take the initiative yourself. And when you do that, you will find that the board does not have you on its schedule. So when I asked for a meeting of an hour, I would get 30 minutes. I completely understand that. But in the end the meeting lasted two hours and included a lunch. A little while later I saw concrete changes that exactly matched what I brought to the table at that meeting. In the end I do have the impression that my initiative was appreciated.’

During the long time he worked for Linde (global market leader in gases), Henk Kolenbrander held several functions in a fully international environment. Linde grew because of acquisitions. Henk was already there when all those companies had to become one entity.
International exchange of best practices and pilots were everyday business, at almost all areas.
For years Henk was responsible for the cylinder activities in seven European countries. In addition he was given final responsibility for ‘safety, health, environment & quality’ in the Benelux region, which meant implementing international agreements, standards and guidelines as much as possible (such as ISO 14001 and MHRP).