Jānis Kraulis is the chairman of the board of the building materials manufacturer “Knauf” in Latvia and manages the business of the company group in other countries as well. It is interesting that he has received an education in medicine and worked as a pediatrician until 1994, taking care of children’s health.
Jānis Kraulis, however, believes that such a change of profession would hardly be possible at the moment, because those were different times.
SIA “Knauf” was registered in 1994. In 2021, the turnover of the company exceeded 83 million euros, and the profit after taxes – 15.6 million euros. The owner of the company is “Knauf International GmbH” in Germany.
Every Sunday, we introduce readers to people active in business. You will find other “Personality in Business” talks here.
Tell the most important thing about yourself as a person in the Latvian business environment.
When it comes to my professional activity, two periods must be distinguished. One period, when from 1994 to 2012 I was the manager of “Knauf” companies in the Baltic States, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and also actively worked at the level of “Knauf Group”, and my main place of residence was Latvia.
The second period has been the last ten years, when I was responsible for the development of “Knauf” business in Eastern Europe, including Latvia, and the CIS countries. These two periods in my life are difficult to compare, because the size of the business differs significantly – in the first period I was responsible for business development in five countries and four factories, while in the second period it was more than forty factories and more than forty countries. The geographic and business scales are different, and so are the challenges.
I’ve been back in Latvia for almost a year now, and I’m managing Knauf’s Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Ukraine business from Riga.
