Each year, Caldwell Partners International chooses 40 Canadians who were under 40 in the past year to honour for their outstanding achievements. Click here to learn more about the program, and find more winners in the list below.
As an executive at Viterra, one of the largest Canadian grain handlers and food processors whose operations span 50 countries, Kyle Jeworski sees his job as helping to feed a growing world.
“We supply ingredients to the world, so we play a very important role in some businesses that manufacture food products,” says Mr. Jeworski, a Regina native who has been with the firm since he graduated with a bachelor of administration degree from University of Regina in 1997.
Viterra handles wheat that is destined for bakeries, oats that go into granola bars and cereals and barley that is turned into malt that is sold to brewers. “We would have a role to play in the development of almost any food product,” says Mr. Jeworski. “We supply anything the farmer can grow in Western Canada, from wheat to canola to lentils to mustard.”
A formidable player in the global agricultural and food processing industry, and formerly known as Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, Viterra had revenues of $8.3-billion in fiscal 2010. In an average year, the firm markets about 45 per cent of the grain in Western Canada and handles 16 million metric tonnes of grain, the equivalent of 200,000 railcars. “We are in a very strong position in Western Canada,” says Mr. Jeworski, who heads a team of about 200 people, plus about 1,500 who report indirectly to him, that oversees the firm's grain elevators, transportation network and special crops processing.
While the firm has grown in size to meet global challenges, Mr. Jeworski has seen many corporate changes since he joined. The organization went from being a co-operative to a publicly-listed company and hit a turbulent patch in the late 1990s to early 2000s. That's when the chief executive officer, Mayo Schmidt, took drastic action and re-structured the company. “We were on the brink of bankruptcy and forced to go back to the basics,” recalls Mr. Jeworski, who was part of the restructuring team.
“We had really strong leadership and were able to take the company from where it was to the huge success that we're seeing today,” says Mr. Jeworski, adding that Viterra has grown thanks to the $1.8-billion acquisition of Agricore United in 2007 and the $1.2-billion acquisition of Australia's ABB Grain Ltd. in 2009.
Mr. Jeworski is a fitness buff who is married and has a nine-month-old son.
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