Thomas Poelmans

Managing Director

Starting his career at Deloitte, Thomas quickly became responsible for a service line supporting international organizations manage their operations in Africa providing audit, M&E, risk management and project management services.

In 2012, he was one of the people behind the launch of WorldLoop, as project director of WorldLoop, Thomas supported the start-up of 15 e-waste recycling companies across Africa.
In  2014, he started working as an independent consultant and project developer in recycling and renewable energy projects. His clients include the World Bank, the Belgian government, the French development cooperation and the Port of Antwerp.

In 2015 he co-founded NAMé Recycling, a plastic recycling company operating 3 factories in Cameroon having recycled 30 million bottles to date. In 2016 he started developing Hydrobox.

Thomas holds a master in Economics and International Politics, a Prince II certification in project management and is a World Bank trained M&E expert. His work received various awards, including the Belgian Business Awards for the Environment (2013), the Sustainable partnership award (2014) and the Business without borders first prize (2015).

John Magiro 

Technical Director

John grew up in a small village in Murang’a Kenya, about 3 hours drive from the capital Nairobi. Growing up, no one in his community had electricity. The nearest electricity pole was 15 km away.

After seeing his mother struggle, he decided to build his first micro hydro power plant using everyday objects. His talent was quickly noticed, allowing him to scale up and professionalize the technology, constructing a dam that channels water to a turbine and generates electricity. Today, John operates a hydro power plant providing affordable electricity to over 250 households and through his involvement in Hydrobox, plans to build many more.

John is the winner of the Switch Africa Green – Seed Award 2016, the East Africa Hub Grant 2017 and the WWF Africa Youth Awards 2017

Roblain Namegni

 Commercial Director

Originally Cameroonian, Roblain moved to Belgium and studied Business Management at the University of Antwerp. He started his career in process engineering at Deloitte before moving to the industry where he worked for Reynaers Aluminium and Manuchar, a supplier of Unilever.

At Manuchar, he was responsible for setting up operations for Manuchar all over the South American and African continents.

In 2015, Roblain relocated to Cameroon where he is executive director of the country's leading plastic recycling company NAMé Recycling. Roblain  is a director in Hydrobox Belgium & responsible for sales and business development.