|
Group Chairman
John Bredenkamp was born in 1940 and was educated in Zimbabwe at Prince
Edward School, Harare. After leaving school he joined Gallaher Ltd,
the international tobacco concern, in Zimbabwe as a Leaf Buyer and
was transferred to Niemeyer in Holland in 1968 where he rose to the
position of Leaf Director.
Leaving Gallaher in 1976, John Bredenkamp founded the Casalee Group
of companies in Antwerp, Belgium. Casalee was primarily a leaf tobacco
merchanting company but was also engaged in general trading and an
active initiator of counter trade and barter deals. The Casalee Group
grew over 16 years to become the fifth largest tobacco merchant in
the world and the biggest non-US leaf tobacco company. The Group employed
2,500 people and had offices in all the major tobacco growing countries
in the world including USA (Winston-Salem), Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria,
China, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Thailand,
Turkey and Yugoslavia. The company owned tobacco-processing factories
in Holland, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Brazil.
The Casalee Group of companies was sold in 1993 to Universal Leaf
Tobacco, the largest leaf tobacco company in the world. Since then,
John Bredenkamp has expanded his business interests into many different
areas, which are shown on this web site.
As a Rugby Union international, he captained Rhodesia from 1965 to
1968.
 Group office, Harare
|
|
|
