Thijs

Business Development Manager PMV-01 at DCM

A few years before I started working at DCM, I had already applied for a position in the Retail department. As my profile was considered to be more in line with a professional market position and because there were no vacancies for such a profile at that time, my application was not accepted.

But three years later, it turned out that DCM still remembered my application, as they contacted me about a vacancy that might suit me. When I started as a technical advisor in 2014, our goal was to launch the PMV-01 on the international market. PMV-01 is a vaccination strategy used in greenhouse tomato cultivation. With this strategy serious quality and production losses caused by PepMV can be avoided in a sustainable and organic way. I started in a few countries outside of Europe, such as Morocco and Switzerland, followed by France and Germany. In the meantime, we are active in 17 European countries and in 21 countries worldwide. The great thing about the PMV-01 story is that you can really help your customers. PepMV is a virus that can have a huge impact and has even made some companies consider going out of business. If we can intervene in time and introduce PMV-01 early on, we can really make growers very happy. This creates a unique bond with your customer and obviously gives a lot of satisfaction.

In January 2019, we created what we call the Biorationals team. This team currently consists of eight colleagues. They all have their own region, but also their unique expertise. This team is not only working on PMV-01, but also on new biostimulants and biological plant protection products. Together with Inge Hanssen, R&D Manager at DCM, I manage the team in my role as Business Development Manager. Our aim is to integrate practice related questions and challenges into our research, but of course also to develop new and innovative solutions that can be applied in practice. The Biorationals team therefore carries out a lot of trials to generate data that can be useful to our sales teams in the different countries. We also work in close collaboration with our research centre Scientia Terrae for additional analysis and follow-up of certain trials.

In recent years, the company has grown enormously and many newcomers have joined our team. However, that ‘family feeling’ still remains strong, which is really unique I think. Even though we are a large group and everyone is different, we all share the same vision and the same values as a company.