Board & Management

(°1951, Belgian)

Luc Bertrand qualified as a commercial engineer at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He started his career as vice president and sales manager, Northern Europe at Corporate Finance Bankers Trust. He joined Ackermans & van Haaren in 1986 and chaired the executive committee from 1990 to 2016. He is currently chairman of the board of directors. His other positions include chairman of the board of directors of DEME and CFE, and director of Delen Private Bank and Bank J. Van Breda & Co. He also has a seat on the board of directors of various non-profit organisations. He has been a director of SIPEF since 1996.

End of mandate 2025

(°1959, Belgian)

François Van Hoydonck graduated in accounting and taxation at Sint-Eligius Business School Antwerp. He joined SIPEF in 1979, specialising in the palm oil sector, other agro-industrial activities and their financial management. He was chief financial officer of the SIPEF group between 1995 and 2007. He has been managing director of SIPEF from 2007 -2024 and chairman of the executive committee from 2014 - 2024. 

François retired as managing director of the SIPEF Group on September 1, 2024. 

End of mandate 2027

(°1966, Belgian)

Tom Bamelis is a qualified commercial engineer from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and has a master’s degree in financial management from the VLEKHO Business School. He began his career in 1988 as an auditor at Touche Ross (now Deloitte) in Brussels and joined the financial department at Groep Brussel Lambert as management representative in 1994. In 1999 he moved to Ackermans & van Haaren, where he is chief financial officer and a member of the executive committee. He has been a director of SIPEF since 2018.

End of mandate 2026

(°1977, Belgian)

Priscilla Bracht is a licentiate in art history and archaeology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and has studied European relations and international politics. She specialises as a director of family firms. She has been a director of SIPEF since 2004.

End of mandate 2026

(°1977, Belgian)

Alexandre Delen started his career in 1999 with The Capital Markets Company where he was responsible for website projects for several banks. From 2000 until 2002 he worked as consultant of IP Globalnet on the development of a call centre for Belgacom Skynet. In 2002 he joined Delen Private Bank, and did a traineeship within Swiss American Securities. Since 2004 Alexandre was full-time with Delen Private Bank's activities, mainly in the IT department. In 2014, he joined the Executive Committee and the Board of Directors of Delen Private Bank. Since 2017, he is Managing Director of the bank, responsible for IT Operations and Logistics.During his presence at Delen Private Bank, he played an important role as inspirer and coordinator of the bank's IT team, which grew from around 10 to 135 employees. He launched several innovative projects using new technologies that prepared the organisation for the digital revolution of the past 15 years (e.g. hyper-converged and cloud computing).He also played a role as advisor on ICT to the Ackermans & van Haaren group companies. He has been a director of SIPEF since 2022.

End of mandate 2026

(°1958, Belgian)

Antoine Friling is a bachelor of business administration, finance and marketing and a master of business administration - international management. He has been active in the banking industry for several years and a director of family, industrial and financial companies in Europe and South America for many years. He is chairman of PRAXIS Private Office, a family office with its registered office in Antwerp. He has been a director of SIPEF since 2007.

End of mandate 2027

(°1964, Belgian)

Gaëtan Hannecart is a civil engineer mechanics and production policy from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He started his career at Kone Lifts in London in 1988. He was awarded a European Commission Comet scholarship in 1989 and he joined IBM Germany in Stuttgart, subsequently moving to IBM Belgium in Brussels, where he worked as an industry specialist ‘manufacturing companies’. In 1994, he earned a master of business administration degree at the Harvard Business School. That same year he joined Matexi, the Belgian market leader in area and real estate development and urban renewal projects, where he is chief executive officer. He is co-founder and director of the non-profit think and do tank Itinera Institute (sustainable economic growth for Belgium and its regions), co-founder and chairman of the non-profit YouthStart (reintegration of underprivileged young people) and chairman of the non-profit Guberna (good governance). He is currently chairman of Financière de Tubize, the listed reference shareholder of the biopharma company UCB and director at N-Side and Groupe Louis Delhaize. Since 2020, he is a member of the SIPEF board where he represents the Bracht group.

End of mandate 2024

(°1971, Malaysian)

Yu-Leng Khor has a master of science in economics from the London School of Economics and a bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Politics and Economics from Oxford University. Yu-Leng started her career in the financial industry in Malaysia with a pioneering online broker-banker and stints with Citygroup and other financial institutions in Singapore. Since 2003, she has worked as an international economic consultant and specialist on Southeast Asia, as lead on actionable reports for dozens of Fortune 500 companies, Asian corporations, Government agencies (including the EU Commission), NGOs, including the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and family offices. She specialises in agribusiness (sugar, palm oil, rubber and more), infrastructure, trade and China-Asian economics. From 2014 until 2017, Yu-Leng worked extensively on the economics of commodity supply-chains, sustainability and smallholders, as the research head for Southeast Asia at LMC International Ltd. In addition to her ongoing work as a market and ESG analyst, she has been associated (sustainability) at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, part of the founding group at Climate Governance Malaysia, research associate of the Institute of China studies at the University of Malaya, council member of the Malaysian Oil Scientists and Technologists Association and advisor at Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots (Malaysia). Since 2018, she is an independent non-executive director of Rohas Technic Berhad, active in regional EPC and fabrication for power transmission, telecommunications, and water infrastructure. She is a director of SIPEF as from 9 June 2021.

End of mandate 2025

(°1981, Italian)

Giulia Stellari has a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Harvard University. In 2004 she started working as a graduate research assistant in the laboratory of Molly Jahn at Cornell University focusing on Molecular breeding, Genomics, Biochemistry and Genetics. She successfully completed her PhD program in 2009. The same year, she co-founded AgSquared, a technology platform helping farmers to improve productivity, profitability, and sustainability by designing software tools for task management, farm planning, and cost accounting. From 2015 until 2022 she was active at Unilever as Director for Sustainable Sourcing, Digital and Carbon Solutions. In March 2022, she joined Fall Line Capital, a private equity firm focused on investing in US farmland, ag tech and food tech startups. She works across the firm’s investment areas, leading ESG risk management and impact assessment for the firm. Giulia has been appointed to the EU Expert Group on Carbon Removals and is a member of the SBTi Technical Advisory Group and Field to Market’s Innovative Finance Committee. Since 2023, she is a director of the SIPEF Board.

End of mandate 2027

(°1959, British)

Nicholas Thompson has an honours degree in agricultural science (plant breeding, agronomy and soil science) from Nottingham University, a master of science in agriculture from Reading University, a certificate in rice production from the International Rice Research Institute (Philippines) and a master of business administration from Bath University. He began his career in Papua New Guinea in 1984 as assistant manager at New Britain Palm Oil Ltd (NBPOL), where he was promoted to deputy director plantations in 1991 and managing director in 1994. Under his leadership, NBPOL grew into one of the largest employers in Papua New Guinea and a renowned sustainable palm oil company, which was taken over by Sime Darby Plantations in 2015. That year he was awarded the honour of ‘Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’. He sat on the board of directors of the National Development Bank PNG, West New Britain University Centre and various palm oil industry professional organisations in Papua New Guinea. He has been a member of the SIPEF board since 2019.

End of mandate 2027

(°1973, Dutch)

Petra Meekers has a biomedical sciences qualification and a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry. From 2006 to 2008, she was active in the renewable energy industry as an independent consultant at BioX Sdn Bhd. She was group sustainability manager at New Britain Palm Oil until 2015, when she was appointed director of CSR and Sustainable Development at Musim Mas Holdings Ltd. Until March 2021, she was active at Unilever Asia Pte Ltd as vice-president Sustainable Sourcing Unilever. From 2017 until 9 June 2021, she was a director of SIPEF, where she became a member of the executive committee as from 10 June 2021. 

Petra has succeeded François as managing director of the SIPEF Group as of September 1, 2024.

(°1984, Belgian)

Bart has a master’s degree in commercial sciences, majoring in international business, from the Lessius University College, Antwerp. He began his career in 2008 as a financial auditor at Ernst & Young (now EY) in Antwerp. He joined the financial department of SIPEF as financial controller in 2014. In 2018 he was promoted to group controller of the SIPEF group. As from 1 January 2024 he is Chief Financial Officer and member of the executive committee of SIPEF.

(°1962, French)

Thomas Hildenbrand trained as an agronomist and was awarded a master’s degree as an agricultural technician (horticulture option). He began his professional career in Switzerland in 1983, before relocating to Ivory Coast in 1984 to work for the SIPEF group at Plantations J. Eglin SA as production manager and subsequently general manager. Between 1990 and 1994, he founded and developed Société Bananière de Motobé, which is now part of Plantations J. Eglin SA, where he is currently a director. In 1994 he transferred to SIPEF Head Office in Belgium, where he worked as a management representative. He is currently fruit department manager and a member of the executive committee.

(°1975, Dutch)

Robbert Kessels earned a master’s degree in international business at Maastricht University. He began his career at Cargill Rotterdam as commercial trainee at the trading desk. He went on to fill various positions in Cargill’s tropical oil trading department in Indonesia and Singapore over a seven-year period. In 2012, he left Cargill after more than 12 years to join SIPEF, where he was appointed marketing commodities manager in 2013. In 2014, he was appointed chief commercial officer and a member of the executive committee.