Par Jean-Philippe Massieu
Published on
During the evening of this Friday, January 13, 2023, Jean-Francois Fortin retraced his career at the head of the Master Dairy Cotentin from the restaurant The Panoramic of La Pernelle (Manche), where some hundred guests were going to meet in his honor, the day after his 76e birthday. He asserted his rights to retreat the December 31, 2022. This is a great chapter in the history of Master Dairy Cotentinthe largest so far, which turns out well.
Early career close to home
Jean-Francois is born January 12, 1947 in Coulonges-sur-l’Autize (Deux-Sèvres), a small town of 2,000 inhabitants, from a modest family: “My mother helped her parents who were very small market traders. My father was a plasterer. He was a good friend, but a poor husband. They separated. » He is not agricultural environmentbut “the majority of my friends were farmers or sons of farmers. Returned from military service, he was hired by the Uzelet dairy, a few kilometers from his village, to “set up the laboratory. “At the time, the The Minister of Agriculture and the Crédit Agricole national fund asked the dairy cooperatives to restructure to meet consumer demands in terms of safety and traceability. Our region was a pilot. At the same time, the director asks him to represent him regularly in Paris at the national level to report on the progress of the experiment: “I find myself with an address book for the whole of France. »
M. Couchou was director of the Montebourg dairy. He was one of the most regular at these meetings. One day, he asks me for my professional and personal telephone numbers. Shortly after, he calls me on a Saturday afternoon. I was at home watching a rugby match. He was on the board of directors of Ucalma and had talked about me.
The new union of small Cotentin cooperativeschaired by Édouard Ambroise, wanted to hire him to try to rectify his bad situation.
His first visits to the Cotentin
It was in 1977. Jean-François Fortin decides to come and meet Édouard Ambroise. “I had never set foot in the Cotentin. I liked this guy. And I think it was mutual. He said to me: “There is no longer a circle”. But he wanted to save local producers, like him. He was afraid that their milk would end up no longer being collected. I saw his motivation. I am a challenging man. I liked it ! “, he says. But it was still necessary to convince his wife to leave everything when they were parents of two boys. “The pot is that the day she came with me, it was very sunny. Someone had freed up to show us around The Hague. It was wonderful. »
Winning strategy
Jean-François Fortin signs with Ucalma shortly after, in 1978. During the first months, he stayed at the Hôtel de l’Agriculture in Valognes before his family joined him. Ucalma had embarked on the production of milk powder and feed for calves in integrated farming. The young director offers to give up for a radically opposite strategy : embark on the cream cheese and the crèmebut also in the out-of-home catering. “I was convinced that it would develop. »
Jean-François Fortin also believes in beginnings of private labels. “As we didn’t have a penny, we didn’t have the money to advertise. He thus began to work with Promodès, then Intermarché. Jean-François was visionary on these first two points.
In order to secure the delivery, Jean-François Fortin signed another paid element: “We bought Arcens transport as soon as I arrived. Mr. Arcens was a struggling small carrier from Bricquebec. We have exactly the number of trucks needed to fill the main lines to the Paris region or to the North. »
The move to Stade Malherbe
“IF I came to football, it’s because I’m passionate about it. I have always played football, as an amateur. On Saturdays, I took the kids to matches,” recalls Jean-François Fortin. I was curious to know how a professional club was run. The president of Stade Malherbe, Guy Chambily, was a dealer of all truck brands. He was a customer somewhere. As he saw that I was interested, he said to me: “I have shares (in SM Caen), I’ll sell you three. “”. After the withdrawal of Guy Chambily, the board of directors gives its confidence to the captain of the company from Manchos to endorse the “jersey” of president. The Valognese found three interests in it: “Firstly, it is the passion for football. Second, it was going more specifically into management. Thirdly, football is the most popular sport, the most media. It offers an exceptional address book” for any business leader. “It lasted 17 years until I was fired. And I went through the sheet metal box (sic)”, he does not forget. This incarceration followed the allegedly rigged match Nîmes-Caen, of May 13, 2014. But Jean-François Fortin had been released by the Paris Court of Appeal on January 28, 2020. Even being retired, he will not try to return in the world of professional football: “I still have a few friends in it and they tell me that things have changed a lot. Now, the presidents are salaried pension fund people. What matters to them is what they earn at the end of the month. »
The brilliant idea of France Frais
That’s not all. To sell milk from Cotentin producers, Jean-François Fortin goes through wholesalers in all departments. He realizes that by becoming a distributor, the cooperative would capture much more added value. He talks about it to Édouard Ambroise who was not convinced but, because he trusts him completely, says ok… “for a single takeover” of a wholesaler business. “The first was Guillerit, which had three depots in Tourlaville (delegated commune of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin), Valognes and Saint-Lô. He was about to retire and was born 20 km from my home in Deux-Sèvres! That was in 1980. Since then, the cooperative has acquired 126 distribution companies who form France Fees. “We make 2 billion in turnover: 1.6 billion with France Frais and 400 million with the cooperative. »
While Ucalma was to have “a fifty employees” in 1978the cooperative is now approaching 1,000 employees and subsidiaries more than 4,500 people. “I think it will be nearly 6,000 fairly quickly,” considers Jean-François Fortin. Currently, 40 hirings are in progress, particularly for new markets that are taking shape at the Méautis plant. These markets would rather be intended for the French or near European market. Clearly, if the cooperative had not had the support of France Frais, it would probably not have survived the breach of contract with the Chinese client Synutra, for whom the Méautis factory had mainly been built. It’s his biggest disappointment.
His son William
His son Guillaume succeeded him as general manager of the cooperative in 2018. He now succeeds him as general manager of the group.
That family transfer makes people talk a few times in the countryside. But Jean-François Fortin assures him: “It was Christophe Levavasseur one evening who said to me: “I have the impression that Guillaume is capable of succeeding you. I was convinced of it, but I didn’t want to impose it. I had never mentioned the thing. »
The father just admits having set foot in the stirrup for his son when he graduated from a business school: “It was the automobile that interested him the most, but he fell at a time when the market was not good. We had a refining company in Clermont-Ferrand that Ucalma had bought before I arrived. I said to him: “Go there if you have the gnac”. I offered him this deal. The leader retired one or two years later. He took over and we must recognize that the results improved with him,” says Jean-François Fortin. Guillaume Fortin continued to climb the ranks thereafter.
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