Air Liquide CFO Taki Nkhumeleni goes to Paris as the Europe LIM Program Director.
Air Liquide has announced the appointment of its CFO, Taki Nkhumeleni, as the Large Industries & Industrial Merchant (LIM) Program Director for the Europe Industries Hub, and she will be relocating from Johannesburg to Paris to take on this new role.
Taki explains that she is very excited to take on the new role. “The most exciting part is that all the experience I’ve had in different roles throughout my career is literally coming together into this one project. It’s good to see that there is never any experience wasted.”
Taki says that she needs to brush up on her French really quickly, and started classes a few months ago. “When you get into a different culture, you have to embrace it, and one way to do that is learning to speak the autochthonous language. It is a great way to truly integrate and get connected to the local culture and build relationships.
“And of course I will never be able to order a croissant if I don’t know how to speak French,” she jokes.
LIM is a program targeting combined operational excellence by unlocking end-to-end value creation in reaching operational excellence in the supply chain, from the primary production of the gas until the delivery of the product to customers.
According to the Group, Taki will be leading the program and the LIM team to deliver expected pilot outcomes and push further replication and convergence across Europe at the interface between primary production and downstream supply chain to customers. Aligned with this program, Taki will have a special attention to cover all aspects of LIM around people, processes and technologies.
“It’s important to look at where we are as a business today and where we want to be in the future,” Taki explains. “The environment itself is quite volatile and the complexity increases every day. Right now, we’ve got the energy crisis in Europe - boosting energy transition - which of course impacts South Africa as well.”
She adds that the role will see her enable the end-to-end value that is necessary to drive performance across the complete supply chain.
Taki joined Air Liquide in January 2019 as the CFO for the Southern African entities. In 2020 she also stepped in as acting general manager for Southern Africa and CEO of the company, in addition to her CFO role.
She completed her CA (SA) articles with SABMiller (AB InBev) in 2007 and thereafter occupied various positions in mergers and acquisitions, operations strategies, and financial management at FirstRand Bank, Deloitte Consulting and Shell South Africa.
