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

johan de boeck

 Coo

An engineer with more than 20 years of experience in the industry delivering large turnkey projects with clear KPIs, milestones, deliverables and strict deadlines including international work experience in Japan, the United States, Turkey, the United Kingdom. Kingdom, Hungary and the Czech Republic. For the past 10 years, he was Managing Director & Operations Director at Nitto Europe.

​

Before that he worked as a supply chain & customer service manager at Huntsman (1997-2003), and held roles as quality engineer, master scheduler and supply chain coordinator at Borealis (1986-1995).

Johan is an experienced negotiator who seamlessly combines strategic thinking and technical insight. He is also a strong people manager who managed 650 people in the past. Johan is chairman of the platform for the production industry of POM Limburg. 

Roblain Namegni

BoarD MEMBER

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 non-executive board member support sales and business development.

WIM WARNIER 

BOARD MEMBER 

An an experienced CEO with 26 years of international experience across the difference continents in scaling up companies & delivering profitable revenue. He built his career working at Black & Decker, AGFA-GEVAERT and Balta Industries Group evolving from product manager to commercial director and then managing director.

Since 2003 he has been CEO of international groups such as Balta Industries, TYCO international, VITA group (UK), TWE Group (DE) and BPI Group (UK) delivering impressive turnarounds and profitable revenue.

Wim supports Hydrobox as a non-executive board member leveraging his tonnes of experience as a business strategist in scaling up, change manager and leadership