Simon-Jan Terpstra
As I said previously, a new colleague that I will work with for a short time has arrived in Mali. Koot Nel is South-African and runs a grape warehouse. The warehouse in Bamako where I am working is not even close in capacity of his warehouse. It is good to have Koot here because he has a lot of knowledge that he can share with me and the others.
I am happy to be able to report on an important success: we have a hot water bath against anthracnose. This is one of common diseases that affect mangos and other fruits. We are celebrating every little progress!
Koot is wondering about a lot of the same things that I in my first two weeks after arrival. We share the same opinions on how to run a warehouse. We started putting together the manual production line we will be using this year. Next year the warehouse should have a mechanical line.
We really want to make this project a success. But still we are delayed by the progress made of the constructor. Our presence here pushes the progress, so that is good.
We worked on many forms and procedures on EUREPGAP certification. From European perspective this is already quite a challenge. This is even more in Mali, where there is not even a national standard for export. Most of what is exported from here to France and Spain is not certified. I wonder when the EU will block this export. If this happens, the Mango market in Mali will experience big problems.
It is hard to convince people here of just have important certification is and how many doors it will be able to open in the future.
Waste is another problem that we are fighting. EUREPGAP requires us to answer the following questions: “Has this waste management plan been implemented?” Mali itself doesn’t even have waste management. All waste is brought to the outskirts of cities and villages and dumped there. Or even worse – it is just dumped on the corner of the street, waiting for the wind to take it with her.
We a very busy trying to share what we know about these things with people here! Correcting all of this is something that has to happen before work here can really get started.
For eight weeks starting in April 2007 Albert Heijn supermarket manager Simon-Jan Terpstra is working to help the management of a mango packaging factory in Bamako as part of a pilot project for Albert Heijn, which, if the results after favorable will continue in 2008.
This is the second time mangos from Mali will be exported to the Netherlands for Albert Heijn. Last year it was one container with 20,000 tons of mangoes. This year the plan is to export eight containers.
Simon-Jan started working for Ahold in 2005 as an Ahold management trainee. In his first year he was project manager in the Albert Heijn Supply Chain and the, in his second year, an assistant supermarket manager for Albert Heijn. Since November 2006 he has been a supermarket manager.
Next to his work for Albert Heijn, Simon-Jan volunteers for an organization called World Servants, which carries out building projects with hundreds of volunteers in several developing countries, helping to construct facilities such as schools, health clinics or homes with people from the local community.