Businessman Rocus van Wingerde, originally from the Netherlandspassed away this Tuesday and although his name denotes geographical distance, he was directly related to the industry of Antioquia because was president of Enkaa company dedicated to the production and sale of polymers, chemical fibers and other raw materials for sectors such as textiles.
From Vineyards he was the third president who led this company established in 1964 by the Akso group, originally from the same European country. His period at the head of the organization began in 1973 and ended in 1979. However, he served as president of the board of directors until 1996.
“It was the company that had the best governance and set an example for all of us. Mr. Rocus was a business and social leader, because where it was necessary to appear as a company, he was there. On many occasions I went to his office, he was going to give me a class because, undoubtedly, it was the best managed company, ”said Héctor Arango, former director of the Compañía Nacional de Chocolates, in March 2021.
In an interview granted last year to this newspaper, Rocus van Wingerde said that He had come to Colombia from Argentina, where he lived for six years and learned to speak Spanish: “I came to a city where the industry had a lot of influence. Companies like Coltejer, Fabricato and Tejicondor had leadership positions and their presidents and boards of directors exerted great influence”, he commented at the time.
In this same dialogue, He spoke of the rivalry that existed at that time between the paisa businessmen and the Bogotanosbecause he narrated how he felt that slightly tense atmosphere when he was a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Entrepreneurs (Andi).
“The pulse between the entrepreneurs it was because those from Bogotá were more or less jealous of those from Medellín because the main office of Andi, which was directed by Fabio Echeverri Correa, was in this city and not in the country’s capital”, he said.
some hard times
Rocus van Wingerde said that he experienced two particularly difficult moments during his presidency at Enka. The first, as he commented, was “a fiber crisis that happened just between 1973 and 1974 and was of a world order, as a consequence of the oil crisis and that opened the possibility of a paralysis in the factory due to lack of methanol, which was very important in chemical processes”.
“It was essential that our supplier, Shell, kept us supplied. That is why I traveled to London, for an hour and a half conversation, to ensure that this company in England gave the order to release the methanol that we needed, ”he added.
The other hard moment was when the Enka union, as he recounted it, was infiltrated by the ELN: “They had taken the leadership in the union by reforming the statutes (…) a strike could be ordered with the votes of 17 people who were in favor (…). This was a difficult crisis because we had never stopped the factory and it was not possible. In the end nothing happened, I maintained a firm position and said that the consequence would be dismissal, I stayed in the background as the ugly man. I mean, they watched and knew that I was the one making the decisions. This was one of the ugly moments of the seven years that I was in Enka”.
Rocus van Wingerde returned to the Netherlands in 1996 and left the Akzo group at the age of 62.s old and set up a consulting firm with which he provided services to Sura and whose impact led to the merger of Fabricato and Tejicondor in 2002.