Temporary management changes at Royal FloraHolland: David van Mechelen becomes interim CEO, Hendrik Jan Roel interim CFO

The Supervisory Board of Royal FloraHolland (RFH) has appointed David van Mechelen, the current Chief Financial Officer (CFO), as interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO). An external candidate, Hendrik Jan Roel, will be temporarily appointed interim CFO, effective 1 October. Both appointments are essential for ensuring continuity and maintaining momentum in implementing the 2030 strategy now that CEO Pieter Bootsma cannot perform his duties. In the meantime, Pieter Bootsma is working hard on his return by further building up his resilience and energy levels. RFH will gradually move away from this temporary situation as soon as possible. 

Evert van Helvoort, Chairman of the Supervisory Board: "David has temporarily taken on the CEO portfolio in addition to his own CFO portfolio in recent months. Because we want to give Pieter the peace he needs to make a full recovery before returning as CEO, we have decided, in consultation with Pieter and David, to opt for this temporary solution until Pieter fully recovers. David has been working as CFO at RFH for more than seven years. He has helped manage our cooperative and strategy implementation from the executive board all these years, is familiar with the scope of the cooperative and its members, and has extensive knowledge and experience of RFH's cooperative, strategic and administrative issues. The CFO role that will temporarily become vacant as a result will be filled from 1 October by a highly experienced professional: Hendrik Jan. He has a broad background in finance, has previously been CFO and has extensive administrative experience in an international environment. Given his broad background and experience, we expect him to be able to step into this role quickly and effectively. With these temporary appointments, we on the Supervisory Board expect that the strategy implementation that RFH was well on its way to achieving under the leadership of Pieter can continue to be shaped at the desired pace."

Until recently, Hendrik Jan was CFO and Executive Board Member of citizenM, an international hotel chain, where he was responsible for finance, operations, HR and data.  Before that, he had a long career at Albert Heijn/Ahold, where his last position was as a member of the Executive Board of Albert Heijn.

The RFH members' council and employees' council have been informed of this temporary appointment.