Ben Tax

I'm married with Lieneke and we have 6 fantastic children. Together with Kees Reinink and Marco van Leeuwen I'm leading Rijk Zwaan. Together with Anton van Doornmalen and the family Zwaan we are the owners of Rijk Zwaan. Our company culture can be descriped in short as follows: Rijk Zwaan has a unique company culture, aimed at involvement, team work and respect, with room for healthy, personal growth and development. Rijk Zwaan distinguishes itself in particular, therefore, with its people-orientated approach. Strong involvement Rijk Zwaan believes that only with highly motivated employees can we give our customers top quality seed and a top quality service. And that motivation only happens when there is a high degree of involvement in the work, mutual respect in the way we interact with each other and a pleasant working atmosphere. That is why we offer our employees pleasant and lasting employment with good working conditions. Respectful contact In order to realise our ambitions, Rijk Zwaan has a number of important starting points. For instance, we set great store by the truth in all our communications, so that any decision making is always done on the right basis. We also stand for friendly, open and clear contact with each other, with respect for each other’s opinions and ideas. Along with this go high moral standards and values, internally as well as in our business dealings. Own initiative Within Rijk Zwaan we have strongly-decentralised management: it is expected of employees that they act as independent entrepreneurs. Decision making is done on the basis of argumentation, for blindly following orders is not our style. Dynamic market conditions demand, after all, a creative working method and, therefore, plenty of room for one’s own initiative. We are convinced that with this work ethic we can best serve our customers, whom we regard as partners.