JE Grote Company announced Thomas Mathues as first Chief Development Officer
Thomas P. Mathues is named to the position of Chief Development Officer of the JE Grote Company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, USA, effective immediately.
In this newly created role Mathues will be responsible for identifying, and bringing to fruition, globally based business opportunities within the company’s focus of industrial food equipment.
He most recently served as President of the Vanmark Division of the JE Grote Company. He will report to the Company’s CEO, Bob Grote.
Concurrently, Jason L. Davis is named as General Manager of the Creston, Iowa activities of the Vanmark Division. Davis was most recently Operations Manager in Creston. Wes Jacobs, General Manager for the Boise, Idaho activities of Vanmark Division will continue in his current role. Together they will report to Bob Grote.
From the interview that Tom Matheus gave to our print magazine Potato Processing International, issue September/October 2014:
PPI: How expensive is it to bring such innovations into the processing industry?
Tom Mathues: Vanmark is a part of a bigger company called J.E. Grote Company. For this work, we brought the entire resources of the whole combined organization to bear. I personally have a long history in engineering and Research & Development in several different industries, and when we saw the opportunities that led to Lamina I went to my boss, who is a head of the J.E. Grote Company, and told him that this was a fantastic opportunity to make an investment that could change the industry. It is the kind of investment that the former GME could not have made alone.
PPI: Where do you see more opportunities in the market, for delivering more complete processing lines or further development of single processing equipment?
Tom Mathues: As we develop new equipment, we give ourselves the opportunity to present more of a complete package to our customers. That leads to being able to offer more complete processing lines. But it also means that in parts of the line where new devices or new opportunities exist for a new product, someone has to develop that product and put it into the market place. That may or may not be a Vanmark product that we want to sell. Because of that, we have the opportunities, and we see those opportunities growing, to join together in strategic partnerships. I think this is probably a major thing that is becoming more important in our market. A lot of customers, especially in the developing countries, want a complete functioning system. They want it to come in and operate in the way that they have described, right away. I don’t think there is any company in the world that can develop every machine at a world-class level on their own. So it is critical that companies like ours first continue to offer better equipment within our own range, but also form those partnerships that allow us to make total lines and a total system that works as a unit for the customers that really want that. My direct answer to your question is that opportunities exist both for full lines and also for individual machines within a line.
You can read the interview here!
