Martina Pfeiffer is in good spirits as she ushers us into a meeting room above the shop floor at the headquarters of Rivella in Rothrist. Earlier today, she and her team raised a glass to a new variety of the soft drink Rivella. Due to hit the shelves a few weeks from now, the details of the launch are still strictly under wraps. But this morning’s tasting session was an opportunity for Pfeiffer and her colleagues to toast the success of their new product – in small tasting glasses rather than the plastic bottles that will soon be rolling off the production line.
It’s moments like these that Pfeiffer loves about her job. “I always used to see my work in terms of management methods and technical skills,” she explains. “But now I’ve got more scope to shape the business. I like achieving things as part of a team.”
Forty-seven-year-old Pfeiffer has worked at Rivella AG for six years, first as production manager and then as head of the company’s supply chain, a position she has held for just over a year. With around 100 people reporting to her, she is responsible for every step along the value chain, from procurement, planning and production to maintenance, quality assurance, logistics and customer service. Development and engineering also fall within her remit, and her position on the board means she has to tackle strategic questions on the company’s future: Which new products should Rivella develop? Where should they focus investment? Which areas of business could benefit from digitalisation? And how can they reduce their environmental footprint?
Pfeiffer takes a sip from a bottle of blueberry-and-rhubarb-flavoured “Focuswater”. This line of vitamin water products is part of the Rivella Group’s portfolio, along with the Michel brand of fruit juice products that are currently being bottled on the shop floor below. “When I go shopping, I certainly spend longer in the drinks section than I used to!” says Pfeiffer with a smile. “I like to take a look at what the competition is up to – and how we measure up.”
Fascinated by sports and nutrition
Pfeiffer’s interest in beverages and food in general goes back many years. She was a keen athlete in her youth, competing in swimming events and later in triathlons. She has always been interested in the beneficial effects of a well-balanced diet. Inspired by her interest in science subjects and what she describes as her practical nature, she enrolled at ETH and completed a degree in Food Science.
Eager to take us on a quick tour of the plant, Pfeiffer dons a hairnet and work coat. She also pulls on a pair of steel-toed safety boots. Then we’re off to the production hall, where bottles are filled and packed – a huge space full of automated machinery and relatively few workers, who are responsible for monitoring production. “Quality is never an accident” says a sign in the anteroom, where Pfeiffer washes and disinfects her hands.
On the shop floor, she pauses in front of a machine packaging bottles into six-packs and tells us about the dissertation she wrote at ETH, which required her to investigate the omega-3 fatty acid content of fish and explore its relevance for human nutrition. “The things I learned at ETH are useful for the discussions we have here at work on ingredients and other issues,” she says. After completing her degree, Pfeiffer obtained a doctorate in nutritional science from the ETH Department of Agricultural and Food Science. Her doctoral project also dealt with the topic of nutrition, this time in the context of exercise and human metabolism.
When colleagues ask her for tips on sports nutrition, she strikes a reassuring note: “A balanced diet will take you a long way.” Equally pragmatic is her advice on healthy eating: “Nutrition should always be viewed in relation to physical exercise. The more you move, the less you have to worry about what you eat.”
Giant screen for team meetings
Pfeiffer continues to keep active. She regularly spends her lunch break jogging along the bank of the River Aare towards Boningen or as far as Aarburg, which is a 7-kilometre, 40-minute round trip from Rivella’s headquarters in Rothrist. But she no longer tackles the Olympic distances she used to cover in triathlons, nor the 1,000-step hiking trail up to the top of Born mountain, which has a punishing 300-metre elevation gain. “You have to be crazy to do that!” she says with a laugh.
When Pfeiffer took up her new post at Rivella, the management team made a short video to present her to the workforce. It shows her kitted out with hiking gear and a rucksack on top of a mountain, rock climbing with helmet, ropes and carabiners, and riding a mountain bike. “For me, exercise is all about nature, fresh air and, hopefully, a little bit of sun!” she says. Recently, however, she also took a shine to yoga. “It’s great to keep learning new things,” she says.
Having completed our tour of the production hall, Pfeiffer heads up the stairs to the office wing on the third floor. In the corridor, she stops in front of a giant screen that offers a view over the shop floor. Tapping her fingers on the screen, she scrolls through production schedules, error messages, consumption data and downtime figures. Staff can enter this data in the system directly from their company smartphones.
