Case Study

YARA INTERNATIONAL1

It had been a demanding week for Mr. Egil Hogna, Senior Vice President Downstream at Yara International ASA. He had been travelling across Latin America visiting four countries in six days and was now heading back home to the Oslo headquarters of the world largest fertilizer company. This was his third trip to Latin America over the last four months since he took over the job as SVP Downstream and he realised that they now had come to a cross-roads on their market presence in Colombia. Mexico,

Guatemala and also Ecuador were an easy ride compared to Colombia. There they had already established a local presence through their own sales office, and the visit there was more of a courtesy kind. The story was however quite different in Colombia. Senõr Cesare Gonzales, their local and - most would say - very loyal and devoted distributor since the last 23 years was utterly opposed to any of the solutions suggested by Yara to the dilemma that they were confronted with. He could still hear the resounding mantra given by Mr. Gonzales: “You are the producers – we are the marketers”. He was so frustratingly stubborn and single minded - “You are the producers – we are the marketers” – and Mr. Hogna slowly developed a sense of antipathy for the guy they all worshipped only a couple of years back. Sitting back in the business lounge at the Baranquilla International Airport, Ernesto Cortissoz, recollecting the discussions over dinner the night before, he realised that he was about to change his mind about their presence in Colombia, but that he would have a hard time convincing some of his colleagues back in Norway of the necessity to shift to another operation mode in this important market. He knew that at the Monday meeting next week he needed to persuade a lot of people who were staunch supporters of Mr. Gonzales and of the idea of continuing with him as their sole distributor in Colombia. Mr. Hogna was quite adamant that something had to be changed,...