Babbage and Caldic: a corporate communications team for a global player

Caldic is a growing global organisation, creating innovative and sustainable solutions for the world’s food, pharmaceutical, personal care and industrial formulations markets. The company was founded over 50 years ago by Joop van Caldenborgh. The entrepreneurial spirit has enabled Caldic to grow significantly over the past decades, recently also through several acquisitions. The organisation is active in Europe, Latin America, North America and Asia Pacific, with over 4.000 employees.

Birgit Kamp has been working as Director Corporate Communication at Caldic since 2021. In recent years, she has witnessed Caldic's enormous growth up close. 'When I started over two years ago, we were mainly active in Europe and North America,' says Birgit. 'We are now active in 43 countries and have tripled our turnover from 1 billion to almost 3 billion.'

Grow as an organization and as a team

This enormous growth also brings challenges. 'In 2021, corporate communications at Caldic was anything but set in stone. There was only one person in this department,' Birgit continues. 'Over the past two years, we have started to develop more expertise. I initially started by setting up the internal communication channels. At the same time, I started developing a new website and a strategy for the social media channels, including video and podcast, for external communication.'

'Not only has the organization undergone a development, but the content of our communication functions has also changed. We asked ourselves: what are the deliverables of a communication department? I have defined these in the past two years and created new functions based on them. We have gradually made the division of one professional for external communication and one person for internal communication. Babbage has also helped me with that.'

Dynamics and diversity

'We have now become a global player. As a result, information comes from many different countries and continents. So it is important that we have a diverse team with an international background, that can manage international stakeholders. I also think that this is how we can function best as a team and contribute to the company objectives.'

'We are now a multinational with English as corporate language, so the team also has to be able to reflect that multicultural character. Particularly in terms of nationality. I am already Dutch, so I preferably looked for a native English speaker. I started talking to Monique van Vliet, partly because of the “Babbage Internationals”, a specific community of marketing and communication professionals with an international background. Together we have taken steps to build the corporate communication team with various specialisms and different backgrounds.'

“We were looking for specialist positions and that's why we turned to Babbage.”

Recruitment partner of a global player

Caldic and Babbage have been working together for over 2 years now, mainly in the field of recruitment & selection of permanent positions. The entire corporate communication team of Caldic was put together with the help of Babbage.

'We are a global player, but within HR we have a relatively small team,' Birgit explains. 'For the corporate communication team we were looking for specialist positions. That is why we were looking for a recruitment partner who has both the network and understands what the desired competencies are for the position. It is much faster for us to have the pre-selection done by a partner like Babbage. Otherwise you have to have your own Corporate Recruitment in-house and that is not the case with Caldic.'

'My entire team now consists of Babbage professionals. There have been four of them in the past few years. In the process of acquiring and converting the brand of the acquired organisations to the Caldic Brand, we also needed temporary expertise in-house in the field of brand management. We also quickly filled that role with an interim professional through Babbage. One professional also left fairly quickly due to circumstances, but in the meantime two other positions have been filled. And we do not only work with Babbage within Corporate Communication. Last year we successfully worked together to recruit a Marketing Campaign Manager, Ukrainian Kateryna Lopushanska in the marketing and communication team of Caldic Europe. That makes a nice number of successful matches!'

Positioning of the Caldic employer brand

Birgit experiences the collaboration with Babbage as very pleasant. 'Babbage has known us for a long time and certainly knows my team composition well, which means they can switch quite quickly. They have knowledge of the business and understand the business we are in.'

'Another reason why that helps is because Caldic is not known to everyone,' Birgit continues. 'We are in the B2B sector, so not on the production side, nor on the ingredients side. We are really in what I call the 'distribution space' that is unknown to most people. That is not a bad thing, because we do not feel the need to profile ourselves among consumers. But that does mean that your employer proposition is also not known. That is why it is very important to us that Babbage also plays a role in putting Caldic in the spotlight. To tell the story and why it is so fun, varied and challenging to work for such an interesting and growing party.'

In every healthy relationship, there are bumps in the road. You have to work through them together. 'After having recruited four successful professionals in a relatively short period of time, the last recruitment was a bit more challenging,' says Birgit. 'The enormous shortage on the labor market and some changes in the Babbage team meant that the process took a bit longer. Fortunately, the process was ultimately concluded positively, as I have come to expect from Babbage, and it resulted in a successful addition to my team.'

Sustainable partnership

Babbage invests in sustainable partnerships. Due to the long-term collaboration with Caldic, we know the organization well and at Babbage we know where the needs and challenges lie. According to Birgit, that helps enormously. 'We don't have to introduce ourselves every time. Of course we indicate what we are looking for, but Babbage has known us for a long time, which makes the process much faster. I take Babbage with me in our growth and keep them informed of what is going on and where we stand as an organization. And Babbage knows the team composition well. Based on that, they can determine much more quickly what would and would not fit in the team. And that team is now complete thanks to Babbage.'