Jozef J. Opdeweegh is a C-suite executive with more than 19 years of experience developing, leading, and growing public and private global companies. Leveraging a leadership style founded on the core values of respect, transparency, and loyalty, Opdeweegh has served as CEO for Premier Farnell PLC, Neovia, Americold Realty Trust, and Syncreon.
Complementing and enhancing his experiences as a CEO, Opdeweegh has also held several board of director roles. While on the Interline Brands Board, Opedeweegh helped guide the company’s sale to Home Depot at a two-times multiple of equity value.
Drawing on over twenty years’ experience in developing companies in North America, the UK and mainland Europe, he’s an author and thought leader on the critical relationship between the values we live by and value we create!
Born to a family of educators in Belgium, Opdeweegh has always embraced the importance of developing expertise through diverse experiences and challenges. As such, he has worked across numerous industries and fields including private equity, global logistics, supply chain optimization, industrial real estate (REIT), B2B technology, ecommerce, and warehouse automation. He has also honed a nuanced and multi-national perspective on business and strategy through professional assignments in the U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Hungary, Slovakia, Japan, Singapore, India, Brazil, China, Ireland, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand.
In some ways the scope of his resume risks overshadowing a more consistent thread. For throughout a lifetime of service, he’s lived a leadership philosophy that’s based on core values of respect, trust and opportunity for all. It’s a belief set that has the wisdom to embrace the cycle of experience, reflection and change: to adapt to what we find, to listen and to learn; to remain rooted but also to grow. You can learn more in this candid interview with Jos.
A graduate of University of Hasselt in Belgium, Opdeweegh holds both a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Applied Economics, Business Engineering and Quantitative Techniques from the university.
Given his international upbringing and career, he is fluent in English, Dutch, and German, with a working command of French.
Opdeweegh currently resides in London with his wife, Jacqueline Miguel, and is the proud father of six children.
Multilingual in 4 Languages
English, Dutch, German fluent, and French Working knowledge
Has worked in 19 countries
Offering Management and Start-Up experience in 5 countries
Key Accomplishments:
- Led the sale of Premier Farnell PLC to Avnet at a 71% premium to the share price and succeeded in creating very significant EBIT improvement ($1B GBP of revenue, $90M GBP of EBITDA)
- Carved out a subsidiary of Caterpillar Logistics Services and created a fully stand-alone company without any further reliance on the previous parent company
- Created six successful private and public liquidations
- Generated record revenue levels for Neovia Logistics with industry leading EBITDA-margins and levels of return on capital. Led the successful sale of the business to a new ownership group at a 3X multiple of equity value
- Doubled the EBITDA of Americold Realty Trust from $130M to $275M, while increasing the EBITDA margin by 6.4% through productivity gains and SG&A optimization
- Expanded the Syncreon footprint from four to 60 facilities, increasing the EBITDA from $5M to $94M (an increase of 600%), while gaining an 8% growth in EBITDA margins