Polymer Group Inc (PGI) announced that Veronica "Ronee" M. Hagen has been appointed chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors, effective April 23, 2007. Hagen brings over 25 years of extensive operations and global industrial market experience with large, international public companies to PGI, a leading engineered materials supplier with over $1 billion in sales.
Since 2004, Hagen has held the position of president and chief executive officer of Sappi Fine Paper North America, a $1.4 billion division of the South African-based global leader in the pulp and paper industry, Sappi Limited. At Sappi, she achieved year-over-year improvement in cash flow and profitability with a strong focus on safety, productivity and working capital management while also fostering growth by providing added value to customers.
"As the nominating committee began its search six months ago for a new CEO, our primary goal was to identify candidates with a high level of stature and leadership. Flowing from that criterion was the desire for someone with a record of success, strong industrial experience in a global marketplace and a strong focus on the customer," said William B. Hewitt, PGI's chairman and interim chief executive officer.
"Ronee Hagen meets all of those qualifications and joins PGI with an outstanding record of performance and expertise in capital-intensive industrial markets. She has demonstrated the ability to grow profitability in somevery tough businesses, and has done so with a customer-centric focus. We are confident these characteristics make her the perfect person to lead PGI into its next phase of growth, profitability and success," Hewitt said.
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