Marga Engel (1967)

Operational Manager

Since November 2009 I have been working at AVH dairy trade. Together with my colleagues Xenia and Lydia I take care of accounting and transport. Though dairy trade is new to me, the world of transport is not.

Even when I was a child I have always wanted to go to sea and so I attended a nautical college. After I passed the exam I went to sea as a helmsman assistant. After that year I decided to get a job on the mainland and worked at a shipping office in the harbor of Amsterdam. There I was responsible for road transport in Holland. Eventually this lead to a job where I coordinated international transport on land, at sea and in the air. I then started working at another shipping office. My responsibility here was to take care of everything a ship could possibly need: customs forms, crew shifts, doctor appointments, visa, fuel, food purchase and timetables for loading and unloading. It was a quite divers and demanding job. Frequently I had to work during the weekends and to be present in the harbour in the middle of the night. I enjoyed this hectic life enormously but I knew at the same time that it wasn’t a job for life.

To have a break and to have time to rearrange my life, I took a sabbatical year. A job in which work and private life were in balance and for which I didn’t have to be in traffic jams seemed perfect to me.

On exactly the last day of my year off I went to a job centre and read the vacancy at AVH. When I read it I became so excited, this was the job I wanted: one in transport and logistics and one that was within cycling distance of my home. The job interview I had was the very first after my year off and I still feel very lucky to have this job.

The dairy branch suits me well. At home I grew up with goats and their milk. My father was a lighthouse-keeper and we lived next to it on a small island close to Amsterdam. We were the only inhabitants and lived on what we grew. We had a kitchen garden, rabbits, chickens and a goat whom I milked regularly. I also had some goats of my own which actually were my pocket money. I had the goat covered and a neighbouring farmer sold the kids at the market.

I have got a great job, the atmosphere in the office is very good and the company itself is well organized. Moreover, I have got inspiring colleagues who teach me a lot about trade and dairy produce. After work I like to row, just for fun, so you can still spot me on the water every week.