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An interview with Thierry Frayssinet

1/ It’s 29 years since you officially joined the company. How do you analyse your career ?

It certainly sounds commonplace to say, but everything went so fast. We have travelled from prehistory to industrial revolution actually. It looks like a puzzle we’ve been assembling with our family from the very start. I’ve known the charismatic Clément Phalippou … he deserved great respect … I’ve seen my father go through ordeals, by using his will power, his intelligence and sharpness. He waited 17 years for Luc and myself to take over, he was alone with my mother and he would question himself when facing strategic dilemmas. Things didn’t go that fast though, but you look so far ahead everyday that you trivialise the past. Well done for asking this question! It gives me the opportunity to honour the previous generations and to appreciate the distance we have travelled.

2/ What has changed mainly ?

Everything ! Technological evolution, applied research, and all the recognition the company and the trade have benefited from it as a whole. Organic fertilization has been recognised indispensable in the complex system of soil, vegetal life and biodiversity. Understanding the natural habitat is more complex than synthetic production. Our trade has rightly become nobler. We have been recognised as one inescapable link to feed the planet soundly.It will have taken a century and a half to combine nature with the industry. Five generations but also more and more efficient and specialised collaborators have taken part in it. Our research department is today state-approved !

3/ The way you sound, it’s so exciting that it seems very easy !

Exciting surely, but stressing too … you must question yourself permanently. I don’t think this only applies to our trade, but we’ve been evolving so fast that we are obliged to carry on at this pace not to disappoint people. All the more so since we’ve given our customers such good habits that the slightest variance, even beyond our control has to be paid cash. You’ve got to accept some misfortunes and get use of them to restart the machine.

4/ What are your challenges in the years to come ?

To go on working for the acknowledgment of our products. Not only must we improve organic fertilizers in order to correct « chemical errors » but also work to anticipate the soundness of the vegetal. The range of antioxidants we have been perfecting is a first stage.
Root growth stimulators also act directly on the stress of vegetals and its natural defenses. All the tests we have carried out in our labs, our cultivation rooms and our experimental plots in open fields have proved it. These new technological achievements will allow us to participate in making soils and cultivations sounder and it is from such challenges that we actually draw our energy.

5/ By the way, you don’t lack energy, do you ? What is your secret ?

Here as well, it’s only natural ! I have a family that brings me a lot in difficult moments, I couldn’t have stayed up without their support. I draw my strength back from 3 generations, my parents’, I must pay tribute to, my wife’s and my brother’s, they both help me everyday, my 4 children to whom I must pass down the soundest and most motivating tool ever. To achieve this, always the same motto: « your feet on the ground and head in the stars».