Frans Haafkens

Frans Haafkens graduated from MSc Mechanical Engineering in Delft in 1988, complemented by an MBA from IMD Lausanne in 1994. After his military service with the Royal Dutch Navy, Frans led various international performance improvement programmes for Van Leer Industrial Packaging (1990-1994). In 1995, he joined McKinsey and Company in London, where he worked on various strategy studies in Telecom, Oil and Gas, and Insurance. He joined H2 Equity Partners in 1998, where he led turnarounds at Nedstaal, Nedac Sorbo, and Whitecroft Lighting. After leading a turnaround at Hartman Garden Furniture in 2003, Frans, together with his two i4hi partners, bought out Hartman’s plastics factory and repositioned it as two independent companies in injection moulding (EKF) and plastics compounding (Ecoforte). Since then, Frans has been involved in all i4hi investments, focusing on general and commercial strategy, as well as operational improvement management, either as executive or non-executive director.