‘I REALLY BELIEVE IN COLLAGEN’

Hi, I’m Philippe Callewaert, EMEA Sales & Distributor Manager at Rousselot. I’m 38 years old, and I live in Kortrijk, Belgium. Before joining Rousselot, I was a sales professional in market development management, especially in the area of functional foods and healthy nutrition. Think, for example of healthy powders blends, meal replacement powders (MRPs), caps and tabs.

 

A deep personal interest in nutrition

I’ve been in my current job since the beginning of February 2021. I’m based in our factory in Ghent, where we make gelatin and collagen of porcine origin. I joined the Rousselot team as a result of my deep personal interest in the nutritional profile of products and a drive to make them healthier and better for people. I want to make a difference together with my colleagues and our clients. 

 

Working together on perfect solutions

In my daily work, I’m commercially responsible for the sales of gelatin, hydrolyzed collagen and all our bioactive peptides. We’re committed to delivering top-class gelatin to the confectionary and pharma markets, and to providing the best advice on the use of collagen peptides for nutritional purposes and for protein enrichment in functional foods. In that setting, I work with existing and potential customers to co-develop and co-innovate the perfect collagen-based products for the EMEA market. My focus at the moment is mainly on the Benelux countries, the UK and Ireland, where I’m collaborating with direct accounts, distributors and some key accounts.

 

‘I really believe in what we do’

One of the reasons I love my work at Rousselot is because I really believe in what we do. I know collagen can make a real difference in sports, nutrition and beauty. Another aspect of my work that keeps me buzzing is having daily contact with various types of customers. Building on our depth-knowledge of the wonderful collagen molecule, I like to advise customers on our product portfolio and to add real value to their final product and/or production process. Working closely with my technical support colleagues and using our quality, know-how and services to make that difference is a very rewarding part of the job. And to me it is really satisfying to find a perfect match between our ingredients portfolio and a customer’s needs: it’s often the key to a long-term partnership, even in today’s fast-changing, challenging market.

 

Real entrepreneurship

It’s fantastic to see that entrepreneurship is very important at Rousselot. I really feel we all have the freedom to explore and innovate in different areas. It’s a great feeling, when you show initiative or propose new ideas, to experience gratitude and encouragement. And the results of this entrepreneurial mindset are obviously very real, as it leads to new developments and solutions in many areas.

 

A personal highlight

The biggest challenge I’ve experienced in my work in recent years was starting out in my job during corona. Most of my first meetings with new colleagues and customers took place via online meetings we’re now all so familiar with. I found that challenging, as I attach great importance to personal contact: it helps me to properly understand the needs of our customers, to align our product expertise, and to finally provide them with the best solution. In this sense, I’m very happy that we’re back to having face-to-face meetings. It makes our work so much more fascinating. In fact, being able to meet with customers in person again, and to visit production environments, has been one of my personal highlights of the past two years.

 

Work hard, play hard

I love the quotes, ‘Work hard, play hard’, and ‘Play together and have fun’. In my view, it’s important to give your best shot at work and when the day is over to take out time for enjoying enjoy friends and family. Next to that, I also enjoy doing a good work-out on regular basis. Sometimes, you can combine the two: for example, when I go running, my son goes with me on his bike.