Reinout Impens

Reinout Impens grew up in Burundi, Rwanda, Guinea, and Haiti as his father worked for DEVCO for some 30 years. He obtained his Master’s in Bio-Science Engineering – Tropical Natural Resource Management and a master’s in education (STEM) from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and is currently associated with the University of Ghent on a PhD programme.

Since April 2023, he has been the Chief Operating Officer of Presco, overseeing 27,400 hectares under oil palm cultivation and 8,000 hectares of protected conservation areas, with a workforce of over 10,000 people. The agro-industrial integration includes a palm oil mill, refinery, fractionation, and packaging, focusing on B2B with high-quality and sustainability standards.

He has been the R&D Manager of Presco from 2012 to 2021 and of Siat Group from 2019 to date. Activities in Nigeria include over 700 hectares of trial fields with 200+ dedicated workforce, laboratories for bunch analysis, entomology, and sample analysis (plant tissue, soils, fertilizer), a tissue culture lab and greenhouse (in linkage with Deroose Plants) + clonal trial fields (oil palm and hevea), agricultural support functions (resource optimisation, GIS, remote sensing, digitalisation, ERP & BI…), and (inter)national R&D collaborations with CIRAD, PalmElit, INRAB, IITA, UGent, UNIBEN, and input/service providing companies.