Anthony Zanelli – President

As Vice President at ICL Phosphate Commodity Europe, Anthony Zanelli is responsible for the activities of ICL Phosphate Commodities in Europe including the fertilizer production sites in Amsterdam, (Netherlands), Ludwigshafen (Germany), an industrial service company (Germany) and a feed phosphate company in Istanbul and Bandirma (Turkey).

He started his career as a process engineer within ICL and has now 30 years of experience in the fertilizers industry. He is an active member of many industry defining organizations: Board Member of German Phosphorus-Platform, Council Member of The International Fertilizer Society, Chairman of Meststoffen Nederland (Dutch Fertilizers Industry Association), etc.

Anthony Zanelli has a bachelor’s degree in industrial Operations from the Amsterdam University of Applied Science and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Bradford.

Renske Hijbeek – Vice President

Renske Hijbeek is assistant professor at the Plant Production Systems group. Her research focuses on nutrient management in arable farming systems, both in the Netherlands and worldwide. Having written a PhD thesis on the role of soil organic matter for crop production in European arable farming systems, her work crosses the lines between soil, agricultural and environmental science. At Wageningen University, she coordinates two courses of the MSc Plant Sciences, namely ‘Advanced Agronomy’ and ‘Analysing Sustainability of Farming Systems’,  and gives lectures in ‘the Carbon dilemma’.

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Mark Brouwer

Mark graduated in 1989 at the Technical University of Eindhoven at the faculty of Chemical Engineering. Mark further graduated the postgraduate continuing professional education Safety for Engineers in The Netherlands.

After military service he joined DSM where he worked first seven years as a Process Engineer in an ethylene plant during which he was involved in several turnarounds and revamp projects. In 1996 he joined Stamicarbon as Licensing Manager Urea Revamps. Later he became Manager Stamicarbon Services responsible for all Stamicarbon’s activities in existing urea plants, such as After Sales, Plant Inspections, Debottlenecking Projects, Hardware supply projects etc. In these nearly fifteen years he did visit about one hundred urea plants worldwide and was involved in numerous revamp, relocation, debottlenecking and grass root projects.

Since January 1, 2009, Mark Brouwer left Stamicarbon and started up UreaKnowHow.com. UreaKnowHow.com’s mission is to support, facilitate and promote the exchange of technical information in the urea industry with the target to improve the Safety and Performance of all urea plants worldwide

Fotini Giannakopoulou

Fotini Giannakopoulou has been General Manager at the Hellenic Fertilizers’ Association since 2015. She is an agronomist and holds a MSc in Nanotechnology and PhD degree in Soil Science from Agricultural University of Athens (AUA).

Her research activities cover soil pollution, sorption/desorption phenomena in soils, behavior of radionuclides and nanoparticles in soil-plant systems, biofortification, phytoremediation, nutrient management in farming systems, fertilizer applications and integrated agricultural practice.

She has also an extensive experience in project management, in providing regulation advice and in recommendations on strategic policies. She has professional experience in both academic and private sector. Before joining the Fertilizer’ Association she worked as a Lecturer in Laboratory of Soil and Agricultural Chemistry in AUA, as a Lecturer Assistant in Technological Educational Institute of Kalamata and participated as researcher or coordinator in more than twenty research projects focused. In the private sector, she has also worked as R&D Manager in product development with carbon nanotubes, as well as a Manager in Scientific/Tender Manager. She has more than 20 publications, in international journals and in Proceedings of International and National Congresses.

Petra Haverbeke

Petra is currently working as surveyor for Yara Europe. Her current professional career is mainly focused on the Supply Chain organisation where regular visits and trainings of own and third party warehouses and terminals in the area of Product Stewardship are part of her responsibilities. As a Bachelor of Science (BSc) she started her career in fertiliser industry in 2004. Initially as team lead for the laboratory in Yara Sluiskil production plant. Afterwards she was more focused on the market organisation as an intermediary between the production plant and the commercial organisation in charge of customer complaints and non-conformities, handling and follow-up including the guidance in Root Cause Analysis process.

Since 2012 she has worked in the Research & Development department of Yara where she managed different projects in product- and process development for nitrate and urea fertilisers. During this period she took on additional responsibility as HESQ manager for the overall Yara Technology team, located in Porsgrunn (Norway) and Sluiskil (The Netherlands). Since January 2022 she has internally transferred to the Supply Chain organisation for Europe, responsible for Product Stewardship.

Simon Inglethorpe

Simon is Editor of Fertilizer International magazine, published by BC Insight.

Tim Kerr

Tim is Crop Nutrition Manager at H L Hutchinsons Ltd, a position he has held for 10 years. In this role he manages the company’s fertiliser business and leads the technical support function in all aspects of crop nutrition.
Prior to this, Tim worked for several solid and liquid fertiliser manufacturers, and has been involved in the UK fertiliser industry for over 30 years.
Tim supports the FACTS scheme as both an examiner and a trainer. He is also a member of the industry (AIC) Agriculture & Environment committee.

Hans Reuvers

Hans started his professional career in the central research laboratory of BASF in Ludwigshafen, Germany, in 1982 as a research chemist. Prior to joining BASF, he was a visiting scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Coal Research at Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany (1979 – 1982).

Hans holds Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) and Master of Science (M.Sc.) degrees in chemistry from the Catholic University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands and a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree from the University of Alberta, Canada, where he was an Izaak Walton Killam scholar.

He has 30 years of experience in the design, engineering and operation of fertiliser plants. He has been responsible for various fertiliser plants at the Ludwigshafen site, his duties including technology and engineering. In the years before his retirement from BASF (2016), he was production manager of the fertilizer facilities in Ludwigshafen, Germany.

Hans is the author of about 100 technical publications on fertiliser technology, in particular on nitrophosphate and ammonium nitrate based operations, on safety aspects related to ammonium nitrate, and on environmental aspects of fertiliser production.

Hans represented BASF at Fertilizers Europe in a variety of functions. He was a long-time chairman of the Technical Working Group, the Classification Working Group, and of the ammonium nitrate research Working Group, and a member of several task forces within the association. He continues to be a member of the executive board of the AN-NA meeting (USA, since 2006) on ammonium nitrate and nitric acid, responsible for the agenda and liaison duties.

Starting 2017, Dr. Reuvers is an independent consultant to the fertilizer industry..

Marc Sonveaux

Marc Sonveaux holds a master degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium.

He started his career as Industrialisation Manager in the pharmaceutical, Vaccine, industry at GlaxoSmithKline (Belgium). He gained experience in different departments and worked on several processes within the Industrialization Business unit.

In 2008, he entered the phosphate business by joining Ecophos (Belgium).  A company that was active in the development and commercialization of processes based on the use of low-grade raw materials to produce high quality phosphate products and clean co-products.  Starting as Process and project Manager he became Director of Ecophos Technology Department.  He participated to the development and industrialisation of several processes and applications of Ecophos Technologies worldwide.

In 2020, with the acquisition of Ecophos technologies by Prayon,  Marc joined Prayon as Lead of HCl Based Processes Technology.  There, he manages the integration and further development of Ecophos processes based businesses

Wolfgang Hofmair

Born on a farm in Wels – Upper Austria, I completed my studies in agricultural sciences and agronomy at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU); in 1989 I entered the Austrian fertiliser industry as field trial coordinator for fertilisers and plant nutrition; in 1994 I became Head of the Advisory Service and Agronomy. In 1998/99 I completed a postgraduate course to become a certified HSE auditor. In 2007 I was appointed Marketing Manager.

With the growth of our company, I returned to fertilisation and plant nutrition as Head of Agronomy and was able to get to know France, Germany and the south-eastern European countries with many field trials and a lot of contacts with regional farmers. Since 2017 I have been working as Industry Relations Manager for Borealis Fertilizer and Technical Nitrogen Products. In addition to agronomy, European legislation, decarbonisation of production and the connected level playing field of the new Hydrogen world dominate my everyday life.

Outside of my company, I am spokesman for the Austrian fertiliser industry and a member of the national advisory board for soil protection and soil fertility, as well as a board member of the German fertiliser manufacturer association IVA/BAD.

I am married with 3 children and I love singing, dancing and skiing.

Debby van Rotterdam

Debby van Rotterdam is currently executive manager of the Nutrient Management Institute (NMI) in Wageningen (Nl). NMI is part of the AgroCares holding. In this context she is involved in developing sensors for agriculture and was manager of the analytical laboratory (2016). She has a bachelor’s degree in analytical chemistry (1999) and a master’s degree in environmental geochemistry (2003). Debby received her Ph.D. degree in soil chemistry in 2010 for her work on phosphorus and potassium in soils in relation to crop uptake.

John Williams

John is Head of the ADAS Soils and Nutrients Group. He is a Chartered Scientist and recognised as a national specialist on soil and nutrient management providing  strategic policy advice to government departments, levy bodies and water companies.

He leads the recently commissioned Defra Slurry Acidifcation project and played a lead role in the delivery of Defra’s GreenHouse Gas Platform Project AC0116 and the WRAP/Defra/Zero Waste Scotland/WRAP Cymru DC-Agri project.

John led the review that underpinned the revision of the organic materials section of AHDB’s Nutrient Management Guide (RB209), co-authored the MANNER-NPK nutrient decision support system and is a Technical Adviser for the UK Water Industry’s Biosolids Assurance Scheme.