Oterra appoints Jesper Svarer as Group CFO

Jesper has more than 20 years of experience from corporate finance, strategy, and M&A roles in large multinational companies. He joins Oterra from a position as CFO for Algiecel, a Danish bio-solutions company working with development of natural ingredients for food, feed and cosmetic products using captured carbon dioxide and microalgae.

Alongside his work as CFO for Algiecel, where he focused on fundraising along with building and scaling the company, he has been engaged in interim senior finance leadership positions for Chr. Hansen as Head of Group and Regional Finance and Unibio as Group CFO.

He has previously held positions as business unit CFO and Head of Global Finance for the global healthcare and emergency response company Falck, and Vice President Head of Strategy and M&A for Danish IT company KMD. Prior to this he held Vice President positions in Group M&A and Group Strategy for ISS in addition to corporate finance and M&A roles in companies such as Maersk, GN and Handelsbanken Capital Markets.

“Jesper has extensive experience in both private equity-owned and listed companies and will play a key role in Oterra’s current expansion even further,” said Oterra CEO Martin Sonntag.

“With his background working in complex situations in large matrix organizations, with insights gained from building companies from scratch, he is the right profile for Oterra’s continuing growth journey,” he added.

Jesper takes over from Hubi Windegger who is stepping down for personal reasons.

Oterra was created in 2021 with the carve-out of Chr. Hansen’s natural color division and has grown rapidly through several acquisitions to become one of the leading companies in the market for natural colors and coloring foodstuffs. It has a value chain that stretches from the harvested fruits and vegetables to a global network of manufacturing, blending, and formulating facilities, and sales to customers.