The Growth FMCG CEO Podcast

The episode contains scattered genuine insights - dual-leg sustainability accounting, the biomass payback scenario that flipped from 25 years to 5 years as carbon costs rose, and the geographic rebalancing strategy with real rationale - but large portions are biographical narrative, values philosophy, and brand history that deliver little actionable learning for an operator.

“the payback at that time was 25 years... then we took the real cost for oil and the real cost for gas, and then from one day to another the payback was five years”

“five years ago US, Noram and China was 25% of the company net sales. Now it's 1/3”

The Chief Global Impact Officer concept merging finance and sustainability accountability into a single P&L function with true-cost externalities is a genuinely non-standard governance idea; the articulation of startup partnership as operational co-developer rather than passive investor is also fresh. However, the women-in-leadership section and general leadership philosophy recycle widely circulated frameworks with nothing contrarian.

“I'm not an investor for this startup, I'm a real strategic partner. I don't put money in their startup. That's not my point. I build team who work together to put at scale their technology”

“we have a Chief Global Impact Officer... they payload two legs at the same time”

Beliot is a genuine operating CEO with two decades of practitioner experience including running a €2B post-acquisition integration in Russia through currency collapse and a geopolitical crisis, followed by a group CEO transformation at Bel - not a career podcaster. Some of her answers stay at high altitude but her on-the-ground credibility is real.

“a year after my arrival, it was the first war with Ukraine and at the moment where the country closed itself... I've learned how to manage in a very volatile environment”

“we have multiplied by five the volume in China for the next four years multiplied by eight, donate sales multiplied by two the US in less than five years”

Real numbers appear regularly - 250bps profitability improvement, €500M Leerdammer divestiture, non-dairy mix growing from 15% to 25%, Britannia covering 6 of 10 million Indian point-of-sales, 10 rupees price point, carbon cost scenarios at €50 vs €150/ton - but many strategic and leadership claims are made in abstract terms without grounding in data or named timelines.

“we have decided to sell 500 million euro of net sales with Lerdement”

“massive improvement of the profitability, 250bps of improvement of the profitability versus last year”

The host has clearly researched Bel and occasionally frames good structural questions around failures, trade-offs, and strategic rationale, but the interview is dominated by excessive flattery, leading validation questions, and long host monologues that hand the guest her answers - genuine pushback is almost entirely absent.

“I'm always surprised to see how much you have understood the model without asking us. So it means a lot on how good you are in exploring and understanding fmcg”

“And are those three learnings fair? When I look at it, is it fair? No, it's very fair”