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An interview with Pierre Bastide D’Izard

1/ Pierre Bastide can you briefly tell us about your career path ?

I was born in a family of vine-growers, the choice the Frayssinet company wasn’t then just pure chance. After graduating in Economics : bachelor’s, master’s and DESS, I spent three years serving with different companies in the area of quality management and the environment. When we met, Luc Thierry and myself back in 1997, we agreed upon a working relationship with a mission : the implementation of a quality approach.
Being both an employee and a user of the Phalippou-Frayssinet products I can only testify in favour of the agronomic effectiveness of the products and of the values that have built up the company’s fame.

2/ When did you join the company ?

I joined Phalippou-Frayssinet in January 1998 to defend the colours of the family business. The quality positioning of the products convinced me about the validity of an ISO 9000 certification approach. Moreover, the atmosphere and spirit in the company already matched the way I had imagined the world of mid-sized companies.

3/ As a Manager in charge of Projects&Quality with Groupe Frayssinet, what part do you play ?

The key elements of quality communication in-house are energizing spirits and circulating information. We have just renewed our ISO 9001 AFAQ-AFNOR certification after a three years’ cycle. My objective is to perpetuate the approach while taking into account the evolution of regulatory constraints. Our priority is the customer satisfaction within an economic context, i.e. taking into account the parameters of profitability and economic performance of the company.
Here’s another : enlivening the Quality Management System with all the pilots and staff involved in the approach. The role of a Quality pilot is to co-ordinate, to train any process pilot with a view to implement the Quality approach in order to coherently keep in touch with the quality objectives of the management. Of course the exercise requires everyone’s involvement and operating as a team.

4/ How may the Quality approach evolve in your activity sector ?

Our activity as manufacturers of organic fertilizers has become more and more regulated and technical. The Quality approach is just another tool to continuously improve our company. Some other tools aim at achieving this goal. Sooner or later, a more global approach will be highly needed which will take into account the environmental and food safety stakes in order to reassure our customer distributors and end-users, also within our expansion on the export market.