April 27, 2016

Aviagen honors 30-year veteran

Wy Chee Chiang, Aviagen's senior vice president and senior advisor for international business, was recently honoured by the company for reaching a landmark 30 years of service while based in the US.

"Wy Chee is a respected colleague and has been an insightful and dedicated manager over the past three decades in Arbor Acres and Aviagen. He has played an important role in the growth of the company in Asia and it is a pleasure to honour this milestone," commented Bill Souther, Aviagen's senior vice president of Asia Pacific.

Wy Chee had completed about 10 years of his early career with Arbor Acres in Brazil before he was invited in 1985 to join the organisation at the global headquarters in Glastonbury, Connecticut.

Initially hired in a customer service capacity for China, he soon saw his responsibilities expanded to include a more active role in sales and customer account management in the same market in 1988.

Six years later in 1994, Wy Chee was promoted to vice president in the Asian team and regional manager for both China and Korea.

In 1998, BC Partners, a private equity company based in the UK bought the Arbor Acres global business, including Nicholas Turkeys and added it to the Ross and Indian River brands it had recently acquired  to promote and manage the new company which they positioned as 'the leader in the primary breeder business, worldwide.' This was followed by the formation of a new holding company, Aviagen Group Limited, in 1999 to manage the global breeding entity.  While continuing to expand the Arbor Acres business over the next eight years in China, Wy Chee utilised his customer knowledge to introduce Ross and successfully grow the company's overall share of the market during that time.

In 2006, Wy Chee was made senior vice president for the entire Asian region and was responsible for the three Aviagen brands - Arbor Acres, Indian River and Ross. He continued in this role until 2009, when he signalled his desire to reduce his involvement and was given the responsibility as senior vice president and senior advisor for the international business division of Aviagen, a role he continues to work in today.

While discussing his time with Arbor Acres and subsequently Aviagen, Wy Chee made the following assertion: "I was lucky enough to be involved in two industries. The first was the evolution of the market in China with the first ever shipment of Arbor Acres grandparents in 1980 and the dramatic growth to almost one million birds per year that has followed. The second was the acquisition of Arbor Acres by the private equity company and my participation over the next 15 years in the growth and development of the new organisation that became known worldwide as Aviagen. It has been a wonderful and rewarding time to be in the industry."