Navigating two World Wars and a continent under rapid change up until the new millennium, European multi-national companies have arguably had it harder to survive than their North American equivalents. Those that have persisted are defined by leadership that stayed ahead of the curve, seeking opportunities that few others have been so quick to capitalize on. But innovation can only go so far in success as a multi-national; people must see the brand’s commitment to upholding the values they believe in.  

As Henry Mintzburg said, “Corporations are social institutions. If they don’t serve society, they have no business existing.”

For any global company, finding the right balance between profit maximisation for shareholders and maintaining close bonds with their consumer base is difficult to achieve. These three multi-nationals have lasted the test of time across three centuries because of how they serve both the local and global communities they operate in. 

A brand defined by extraordinary events, charismatic characters, and of course, its cars, Fiat celebrated its first 120 years in 2019 with plans to grow. In 1899, a group of Italian businessmen and professionals from Turin joined forces to realize a mutual dream: an Italian automobile factory that could offer “democratic mobility.” The same year, the first Fiat model was put into production.

Over the next century, Fiat continued to expand production across Europe, dominating Eurasian and North American markets even amid the World Wars. But it was under the leadership of former CEO Sergio Marchionne that Fiat was cemented as a global leader in car manufacturing. With a leadership style bridging the personality of the Agnelli family, the genius and design vision of Dante Giacosa and the administrative foresight of Vittorio Valletta, Marchionne took the Italian manufacturer from the brink of bankruptcy to the New York Stock Exchange, after buying out the Detroit carmaker, Chrysler.

During his tenure at Fiat, Marchionne boosted the company’s value more than a tenfold by restructuring the auto business and separating assets. Among the biggest spinoffs was the 2015 listing of supercar-maker Ferrari NV, where Marchionne also served as CEO and chairman. The self-described “corporate fixer” also oversaw the Centro Ricerche Fiat in international research projects on green energy innovations such as the use of recycled materials and biomaterials. One such initiative was the Forbioplast project, which evaluated forest resources for plastic production in Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

Perhaps one such forest scouted for the project was the 1000 hectares of sustainable forests in Scotland tended to by the Kronospan Forestry Ltd, a subsidiary of Kronospan, the leading wood-based panel manufacturer. Established in 1897 as a small family-run timber business, the Austrian-based multinational has developed a supply chain with over 40 production sites and 16 distribution centres in 30 countries.

Under Kronospan’s owner and CEO Peter Kaindl, the company has harnessed the potential of the integrated Single Market to both consolidate its strength in its native industry while diversifying itself beyond the primary sector. While most manufacturers were fearful of the risk of expanding outside Westen Europe at the end of the last century, Peter Kaindl pushed Kronospan towards owning dozens of wood-based panel manufacturing sites across what was to become the EU, including Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary.

His hands-on approach enabled him to expand Kronospan’s small Austrian and Western European base of his father’s tenure into an international conglomerate with manufacturing centres across Europe – as well as plants and branches in the US – with billions of euros in annual revenue. But Kronospan has set itself apart from the rest of the timber industry as it has placed sustainability at its core of its operating model. In 1999 the company joined the Forest Stewardship Council scheme, which ensures that sustainable practices are used.

In 2003, Kronospan was one of the first organisations to sign up with the Carbon Trust in Wales for a pilot programme to manage carbon emissions. Kronospan also works with Business in the Community Wales which aims to address key social issues in the most deprived rural and urban areas of Wales, where its first international plant was established and has operated in the region for over 50 years.

A commitment to the local community that helped an industry prosper is also shared by Neuhaus, the Belgian chocolatier. Swiss pharmacist, Jean Neuhaus, established his first boutique in Brussels in 1857 after his trademark chocolate-covered medicine catapulted him into fame. Today, the building still houses the global production of its famous Belgian praline, as invented by his grandson. Today, CEO Ignace Van Doorselaere works closely with the family to continue their vision of selling 2,400 tons of ‘honest chocolate’ to over 50 countries.

Neuhaus has been endowed with a Royal Warrant Holder Seal by the King and Queen of Belgium in recognition of its service to both protecting Belgium artistry and working towards environmental sustainability. 100 per cent of Neuhaus chocolate is UTZ certified, the largest program for sustainable farming of cocoa in the world.Under Van Doorselaere’s oversight, from 2025 onwards, their entire cacao production will be 100% traceable and will meet the living and deforestation standards.

Like Fiat and Kronospan, Neuhaus has persisted as global bastions of a uniquely European artisanship—to do one thing, and do it well. But the leadership of all made important strategic decisions at key junctions in their journeys to remain viable and profitable to this day. The marriage of three centuries of good governance and commitment to sustainability – or as Kronospan’s Peter Kaindl might say, the ability to see the forest from the trees – is what separates these three multinationals from the rest.

An exceptionally diligent UK organization has begun to completely take the recruitment world by storm. That company is fatraven. The fatraven team founded the organization with a few key goals in mind – they wanted to help companies increase their return on investment and assist them in getting the ultimate insights into the labour market. The organization has simply smashed those targets and achieved incredible results for top UK businesses up and down the country. They currently source over 500,000 real-time jobs per month and have sourced in excess of 65 million jobs so far due to the incredible range of recruitment tools, data points and services that they offer.

An Industry-Best Platform for Powerful Recruitment Data Analytic

There are a few challenges that recruiting throws up for HR personnel in the UK, particularly the difficulty of analysing the talent market – but this is exactly where fatraven shines. The platform is confronting these difficulties head-on with a selection of remarkable, insightful and powerful data analytics products. Its data-driven ‘Talent market Insights report’ is a perceptive and in-depth pack that is giving UK businesses and decision-makers a huge boost.

The wealth of information offered by these reports is incredible. They include vital recruitment facts and statistics including but not limited to details on which regions have achieved the highest growth and information on the top cities that have achieved growth within the month. Its reports analyse and focus on the latest recruitment trends, which is ideal for keeping up with the pace of the recruitment industry. UK businesses are thoroughly reaping the many rewards of fatraven’s data analytics platform, as each of these services are directly leading to an increase in their business revenue, and a higher return on investment.

Just when you think fatraven couldn’t get any better, you will discover their remarkable premium pack that offers businesses more information on the talent market than ever before. Two of the shrewd and valuable services offered by fatraven’s premium pack include their detailed ‘Talent market Insights report’ and their ‘Competitor Intelligence Report’ – with which businesses can even keep one eye on the local labour market and the other on their competition. All of this is straightforward as the platform is user-friendly, can be used for a range of sectors and demographics, and its reports offer a level of detail that you simply wouldn’t get with traditional platforms.

Making Lead-Sourcing Simpler Than Ever With “Spotter” 

Talent acquisition isn’t always easy. More and more UK businesses and startups are finding it a challenge to understand the ever-evolving talent market.

But the powerful fatraven “Spotter” platform has changed all this. It sets the bar incredibly high when it comes to helping businesses scale in terms of development and finding the ideal leads for this purpose. Its clever and advanced AI-powered web application, for instance, uses modern data science and AI technology that goes well beyond traditional recruitment tools, making getting real-time leads easier than it has ever been.

It offers UK businesses a simple and direct way to pinpoint vacancies alongside the exact amount of business they are likely to receive, source leads with ease and get on-demand support related to business development.

In other words, it makes lead sourcing simple and gives businesses the support they’ve been looking for.

What also makes fatraven’s AI application industry best is that not only does it feature a personalized feed, the app can keep track of vacancies without missing any critical developments, as the data is even provided in real-time.

Enhancing the Recruitment Industry with 180 Degree Recruitment

Taking the 180-degree recruitment model to the next level, fatraven homes in on resourcing and sourcing profiles which directly enhances business development by 60%. This one-stop-shop for all things recruitment uses resource process outsourcing as a model to make recruitment easier for HR personnel in the UK. This means, as well as digging deeper to understand exactly what businesses need from their talent, the platform sources candidates and even arranges interviews.

It means that UK recruiters and head hunters across the country needn’t lift a finger when it comes to their recruitment needs, if they so choose, because fatraven works for them and considers all of their requirements. Their workload is significantly reduced as the service gives them the exact tools they need and streamlines mundane tasks, which also reduces time to hire (by up to 60%), and keeps recruiting costs low.

fatraven: A Superior Platform Bringing Big Changes to the UK Recruitment Industry

There are not many companies in the recruitment industry that can boast superior AI tech, exceptional data analytics, insightful reports and low-cost tools to make recruitment simple – as well as precise data on competitors and region-specific facts that assist UK businesses to scale. fatraven is an industry-leading organization that has taken things up a notch in the world of resource process outsourcing and recruitment. If you’re a head hunter, recruiter or part of a staffing agency, and want to make recruitment simpler, fatraven is just what you’ll need. Find out exactly why this platform is industry-best at fatraven.co.uk.

Nearly a billion tons of waste are disposed of improperly every year, and by 2050 without intervention the world is expected to generate 3.40 billion tons of waste annually, increasing drastically from today’s 2.01 billion tons. In Australia in particular, the latest National Waste Report shows that Australians are recycling 58% of waste generated, sending 37% of it to landfill and recovering only 2.8% though energy-from-waste technologies such as turning biogas from landfill and food waste into electricity. We are facing a reckoning with the way we manage our waste as we realize the way we have dealt with it in the past will be unsustainable in the future, and in order to combat this problem government, industry and citizens must all work together to change the way we view waste, comprehensively overhauling what is no longer working.

In 2019, the Australian government released a National Waste Policy Action Plan in which they set goals for the next decade. Seeking to strengthen their resource recovery industry which had been weakened by a reliance on exporting, they set a goal to ban the export of waste, plastic, paper, glass and tyres, in addition to other ambitious items on the agenda such as reducing total waste generated in Australia by 10% per person, increasing the use of recycled content by governments and industry, phasing out problematic and unnecessary plastics, halving the amount of organic waste sent to landfills and reaching a national resource recovery target of 80%. In order to meet these goals Australia needed their waste management industry to fall in line fully with the plan, but Vik Bansal, chief executive officer of Australia’s largest waste management company, was already one step ahead of them.

Vik Bansal’s Work at Cleanaway

In 2015 when Bansal became CEO of Cleanaway (then going by the name Transpacific), the company was fractured in its strategy, struggling under a heavy debt burden, and had gone through four CEOs in three years. Although the high management turnover and unhappy investors would have been a red flag for many, Bansal believed that the core of the business and the people who worked there meant it had unlimited potential. He came into the company with the intention of giving it a comprehensive overhaul, starting with the development of an operating model that would serve as a solid foundation on which growth could thrive. He corrected courses on the company’s overall strategy, technical challenges, and the behaviour and engagement of the leadership teams, allowing him to identify what fat could be trimmed and what remained essential to the core of the business.

One of the key discoveries Bansal made while working out the company’s operating model was that the multi-brand strategy was fracturing its message. Cleanaway was an acquisition made in 2007, but of the names under the Transpacific umbrella it had the longest history as well as one of the strongest brand messages. In re-branding the company to Cleanaway, Bansal was able to create a new mission statement for the company: making a sustainable future possible. This gave the business a call to action, transforming its image from that of kerbside collectors to a force working to prepare Australia for the imminent circular economy it would need to obtain in order to properly manage its waste.

Creating a roadmap to carrying out the company’s mission statement, in 2017 Bansal introduced Footprint 2025, a strategy for the company that would ensure the country had the proper infrastructure in place to sustainably deal with waste. Australians are among the world’s largest producers of waste, and population growth, increased consumption, diminishing landfill space and strict quality requirements in recycling markets will continue to put increasing pressure on waste management systems. Through Footprint 2025, Bansal sought to drive the company toward long-term solutions that would allow for the recovery of more waste as well as processing more recyclables to ensure that the least amount of residual waste is left to be disposed of. This meant diversification of the company’s waste management portfolio, investing in solutions across the waste value chain.

The Waste Hierarchy

We’ve all heard the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle” and recognize it as the way in which we should operate on an individual level. However, at a larger scale the idea becomes more complex. From a broader point of view waste must be dealt with in some way, shape or form, ordering from most preferable to least preferable as “avoid, reuse, recycle, recover energy, treat, or dispose.” The most preferred method of managing waste is to avoid creating it in the first place, or reduce the amount of waste created. These two methods can only be accomplished by a coming together of governments who create policies, industries who implement changes to the way they utilize materials, and individuals who must be proactive in their efforts. After these two methods, the next steps are to reuse materials in their original or repurposed form, recycle the material into a new product, recover resources such as energy from waste that can’t be recycled, and then finally treating waste for proper final disposal, and Vik Bansal has worked to arrange strategic investments for Cleanaway that accomplish these goals. To better manage waste, the higher levels of the waste hierarchy must be given priority, but the value of the lower levels also should not be lost.

Waste Value Chain Infrastructure

To date, Bansal has directed Cleanaway to invest more than $500 million in growth projects across the waste hierarchy, including collection, sorting and processing infrastructure. This includes greenfield developments such as the original Perth Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), transfer stations and resource recovery facilities, and landfill biogas generators to recover energy from landfill gas. Additionally, the company acquired SKM Recycling Group’s resource recovery assets, including material recovery facilities, a plastic recovery facility and transfer stations, preventing the state of Victoria from losing half of its recycling capacity. With the successful integrations of waste management businesses Toxfree Solutions and Daniels Health, Cleanaway became the 17th largest waste management firm in the world with more capital investment planned in the coming years.

Reuse and Recycle

Through two joint ventures between Cleanway and the industrial packaging company Pact Group, Bansal pioneered an unprecedented collaboration that effectively tackles the ‘reuse’ and ‘recycle’ methods of the waste hierarchy with the development of two new plastic pelletizing facilities. One facility recently broke ground in Albury-Wodonga, and the second facility has been proposed to be built in Western Australia, providing a comprehensive solution that will see less virgin plastics found on the shelves for consumers. Utilizing clean plastic collected from the New South Wales and Western Australia container deposit schemes and supplemented by Cleanaway’s plastic recovery facilities, the ventures will utilize the plastic processing expertise of Pact, and the New South Wales facility will also partner with the beverages company Asahi to ensure that there is demand for bottle manufacturing.  The Western Australia facility will see over 17,000 tonnes of kerbside plastic waste processed into nearly 14,000 tonnes of resin and polymer flake, and the New South Wales Facility will recycle the equivalent of around one billion 600ml PET plastic bottles each year. According to Pact Group this will result in the amount of locally-sourced and recycled PET plastic produced in Australia increasing by two thirds from around 30,000 tonnes a year to more than 50,000.

Recover Energy

These solutions relieve pressure on landfill, provide a lower cost option for councils and businesses to dispose of their non-recyclable waste and contribute to lowering carbon emissions. One energy-from-waste facility has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 450,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year – the equivalent of taking roughly 100,000 cars off the roads.

Cleanaway has proposed to build an energy-from-waste centre in Western Sydney, which would boost the local economy while powering more than 79,000 homes and business and divert up to 500,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste from the landfill each year. According to Bansal, energy-from-waste technology delivers on the triple bottom line of sustainability, and by investing in energy-from-waste infrastructure Cleanaway shows its overarching commitment to sustainability across the waste value chain.

Vik Bansal’s time at Cleanaway saw it rise over 120 places on the ASX market in less than six years, increasing its market capitalization from less than $1 billion to over $5 billion. However, perhaps one of his bigger legacies will be the building of infrastructure across the waste value chain, which will see Australia better prepared for a more sustainable future.

Connect with Vik Bansal on LinkedIn.