Valka’s newly appointed director of sales, Jón Birgir Gunnarsson, has played a significant role in the growth and globalisation of Icelandic tech companies such as Marel, Controlant and Skaginn 3X. Now he brings that experience and knowledge to Valka.
The company’s continued growth with increased global reach and a requirement for in-depth processing knowledge called for new roles that changes Valka’s Sales and Marketing setup.
Valka feels an increased need for processing know-how and engineering input, especially when setting up new or optimising current production processes. It is becoming more common that seafood industry companies choose to not have large engineering departments.
To meet this need and to accelerate the development of processing concepts, such as by collaborating with third parties, Valka has appointed Kristján Hallvarðsson as process development manager. He has long-term hands-on and management experience from within Valka, as well as extensive knowledge from managing international R&D projects in earlier roles.
The focus continues to be on the agility and innovation spirit that shaped the company, where its founder and CEO Helgi Hjálmarsson will continue his involvement in customer interactions.
Valka feels it is important to keep the customer intimacy ties strong as that is what has led to the impressive growth of Valka.
The efforts and spirit of Helgi Hjálmarsson have not gone unnoticed. On 27th of February the President of Iceland presented him with an award as Iceland’s Entrepreneur Manager of the year 2020 on behalf of Excellence Iceland.
