Lino Saputo Jr. runs Saputo Cheese, a $5-billion company that is the colossus of the Canadian cheese business – and a pretty big player in milk processing, as well. But at heart, the 42-year-old chief executive officer insists he is a humble ricotta-maker in the family network of 47 cheese and dairy plants in Canada, Argentina, the United States and Europe – a business founded and developed by his father, also named Lino. The Saputos, he says, are absolutely devoted to their model of family ownership, employee loyalty and a healthy skepticism of the value of an MBA.

How long have you been CEO?

Since 2004, but I’ve been in the business since I was 13 years old. I started on the plant floor, washing the floors, sweeping and mopping, and then I graduated to cheese making. I grew up in our manufacturing division.

Absolutely, and the best-quality cheese too. My first boss, a plant manager, showed me the ins and outs of the dairy industry. He said ‘Lino, the easiest thing in the world is to make cheese. Now, to make good-quality cheese, that’s more difficult.’ There are a lot of good cheese makers out there, but specialized cheese makers are fewer and fewer.

Do you have a favourites cheese, a Camembert or Epoisse?

My taste profiles are not that fancy. I grew up on the Italian specialty cheeses, so I love ricotta and you eat that typically in the morning. One of my cheese plant stints was in the ricotta department and I remember at lunch there was a bakery right across the street. I used to buy a little loaf of bread for about 10 cents. I would open it up and take the hot ricotta and spread it on the bread and that would be my lunch.

Did you always know you would work in the business?

I knew I would be in the business, because I had a passion for the dairy industry. I have milk in my blood. I never expected to be CEO. It just evolved that way. But I knew in some capacity, as a labourer, supervisor or plant manager, I would be in the company.

Do you have siblings?

An older brother and a younger sister, and they are not in the business. My brother is actually the president of the Montreal Impact soccer team, which he founded back in 2003. He has other investments. My sister is a mother of three and she has a fashion boutique for women’s clothes and a party planning business.

Except for your brief stint in a family-owned forestry firm, why didn’t you get experience outside the firm?

Even if my father had sent me somewhere else, I wouldn’t have gone. I follow the same model with my kids – you need to understand the business from the grassroots. You need to rub shoulders with the folks who are busting their behinds to make an honest day’s pay.

A lot of people will say you are CEO only because your father owns the business.

It is common reaction, but I would say that over the time I’ve been in the company I think I’ve proven what I have to prove to the people I need to prove it to. So I don’t lose sleep at night over that.

What does your father do now?

He’s still chairman. He no longer gets involved in day-to-day responsibilities and, of course, we do discuss all strategic decisions. He came to the realization in 2004 that he was ready to step back. When you’re a private entity, you really don’t have to answer to anybody at any time. It’s a different grind when you are a public company, as we have been after 1997. In the past, you had employees whom you wanted to keep happy, but now you have shareholders, analysts and journalists too. He was ready to let go.

Do you have a business education?

I have a political science degree, but the reality is we don’t give a whole lot of importance to academic education. What we look for is people who are passionate, have good common sense and believe in the culture of the company. It is not uncommon to find people who don’t have a high-school education and are vice-presidents of operations with three or four plants reporting to them.

Don’t you want professional managers out of business schools?

There is a place for that. There are certain cultures where professionals will fit better than, say, entrepreneurs or people who just work on passion and dedication. But within our culture, this is the only way we can continue to build on what we are.

Would you hire an MBA?

I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but I wouldn’t reject someone because they don’t have an MBA. We do have MBAs in our organization but of the top management – including executive VPs, presidents of divisions – I don’t think any one of us has an MBA. It is a culture that we have. We are a $5-billion company that still operates as a family enterprise and that’s the way we want to keep it.

What are you doing in the bakery business, which is reeling from the high cost of raw materials?

We got into the snack-cake business in 1999 because it was a great opportunity at the time. It was really opportunistic but our primary focus is dairy. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I think about is dairy.

So you shouldn’t have been in the bakery business?

I’m not sure I’d say that. But will we be in bakery long-term? I’m not sure. If I had to choose from two potential acquisitions, one in bakery and the other in dairy, our reflex would be to go dairy first. That’s our heritage.

How did your family get in the cheese and dairy business?

My grandfather was a trained cheese maker. He had his own cheese business in Sicily and when he immigrated into Canada, he got any work he could get into. Like most immigrants, it was sort of pick-and-shovel work. It was really my father’s dream to have his father own his own dairy business – to get back to his roots. So my father initiated this push towards dairy. My grandfather was a trained cheese maker, while my dad was the salesman trying to sell his father’s cheese.

Is your company looking to making acquisitions?

Yes, and the reason is that there is a global consolidation push in the dairy industry – that is, if you exclude Canada, which is pretty concentrated right now. We are the dominant player here in cheese and fluid milk although there are small strategic opportunities to acquire things here. But in the U.S., the industry is still very fragmented and there are still opportunities to grow our business there.

We’ve already got 32 to 35 per cent of the cheese market in Canada, and we cover the country. We have about 20 per cent of the fluid milk market. We are a dominant player out West and in the Maritimes, but not in Quebec and Ontario.

You said you’ve been an ‘introverted’ business. Why?

Our primary focus, back to the days of my father and grandfather, has been to keep our house in order, and produce the best cheese at the most competitive price. That focus has allowed us to keep our nose on the grindstone. That platform has allowed us to make acquisitions. We say, as long as we take care of our own home, the opportunities will come.

Is that going to change now?

Not entirely, no. But we understand as a public company we need to have certain disclosure. Shareholders would like to know more about our business, and we have to be aware of that.

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