Happiness lies in the small things. Interview with Ionuț Batîr, mill manager Holzindustrie Schweighofer Sebeș

“Vasile, have you heard of Ionuț Batîr? He’s one of our graduates, he’s a smart, quick-witted, hardworking kid. I highly recommend him, he’d fit your needs perfectly.”

The phone conversation was taking place in August 2013 between Suceava University professor Cătălin Roibu and Vasile Varvaroi, from the Holzindustrie Schweighofer sawmill in Rădăuți. In May 2019, the ‘smart, quick-witted, hardworking kid’ is mill manager of the Holzindustrie Schweighofer sawmill in Sebeș. Meet Ionuț Batîr.

Not even 29-years old, Ionuț Batîr is the youngest mill manager Holzindustrie Schweighofer has ever had in Romania.

The young age, however, is not an impediment for the native of Bukovina who now takes decisions on behalf of and for over 600 employees at the Holzindustrie Schweighofer sawmill in Sebeș.

“My parents brought me up to acknowledge that I am accountable, I learned to be responsible from an early age, I always knew my boundaries and was never difficult,” says Ionuț. “My parents were simple people, we were not rich, but we never lacked anything either. We did not complain, we always counted on our family connection.”

 

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

The Batîr family is rooted in northern Moldavia. Both parents – the father, a mechanical locksmith by training and the mother, a mechanical weaver – were born in the Botoșani county.

At the end of the 1980s, the bird in hand was not worth two in the bush, so, the young newlyweds saw each other torn apart rather quickly by their job locations, the father in Brașov, at the Rulmentul ball bearing factory, and the mother in Sibiu.

“My parents lived apart for almost two years, then my mother moved to Brașov, my sister was born and, at the end of the 1980s, they moved ‘back home’, to Suceava, because Rulmentul had opened a factory there. And then I was born,” Ionuț remembers smiling.

The times immediately following the 1989 revolution were a quite a challenge for whomever lived them. The economy collapsed at a national level, factories were falling like flies and word of the day was worrying about tomorrow. Things weren’t any different for the Batîr family, what came first, however, was the close connections between its members.

“It’s been hard, but we never lacked anything,” remembers Ionuț. “We always had food, education and clothes. We never complained, we always counted on the relationships we had as a family. For example, I remember the Sunday lunch being sacred. That was the moment we were all waiting for, to tell each other our concerns.”

Those are the times Ionuț says taught him to enjoy the simple things, to understand that happiness lies in the small things and that honesty and honour are essential values.

 

How to be a grown-up when you’re only 15

In the mid-2000s, during the summer, the Batîr parents took the Spanish road, working in agriculture. The children, however, remained home alone.

“We lived for about one month with our grandparents, but we were getting bored, so we came back home to our apartment – we lived alone for a month, but no one knew it!” remembers Ionuț. “Our home was like a temple: I learned at 15 how to manage money, I was paying bills, reading the water metres, I knew what to do should a pipe burst, I knew how to be a grown-up at 15. At the same time, I knew how to choose my entourage, I gave up on the negative people that were surrounding me. I invest a lot in people and I’m incredibly disappointed if my expectations are not met.”

The following year, now 16-years old and in the ninth grade in the mathematics–computer science class at the Dimitrie Cantemir high school, the young Batîr got his first job.

“I got hired as a waiter at a restaurant in town and, at 16, I was earning enough to be able to chip in when it comes to household expenses,” says the mill manager. “However, at that restaurant, I also got to see the ugly side of people, which strengthened me mentally. In the first two weeks since I got hired they were insulting me on a daily basis, but I just minded my own business. The restaurant’s chef, for example, was openly against us, the younger employees, despite him not being older than 28-29. I once caught him in an honesty moment, when he told me: ‘Ionuț, don’t do what I did. Don’t let the taste of money fool you.’ I then realised how important it is to be able to ‘open’ people up. I resigned at the end of the summer and I understood that, at that age, education was more important than financial gains.”

He did not give up waiting on tables completely, he just changed things up. “I learned not to discard opportunities when I was given the option of being a waiter only during weekends, for events, and that’s when my best times started from the financial point of view,” says Ionuț. “I was earning between 2,000 and 3,000 lei per month, the same amount as my entire family put together. Regardless, I was modest, frugal and was not making a waste of my earnings.”

 

From computer science to forestry

Ionuț Batîr always looked for the practical side of things.

Despite studying mathematics-computer science in high school, he never liked the field. “It’s not like I was a villain in high school, but I was not an elitist either,” he recounts. “I remember my first contact with the real world in high school – a class of entrepreneurial education, but I did not like computer science, I told myself that I wouldn’t want a job in an office… It was then when I chose forestry, I saw myself living in the middle of nature, but I realized that I was no ecologist. I convinced three more classmates to join me in trying our luck at forestry.”

The four years at the Forestry Faculty at the University of Suceava were the theatre of operations for the future nature-loving professional. Meeting professor Cătălin Roibu changed his career path and opened the access to a system which he thought he could never enter.

“Everything changed for me when I stepped foot into the forestry biometrics laboratory, where the way trees grow was being researched,” says Ionuț. “The lab was chock-full of information, I started working on my graduating paper in the third year, I worked for two years and what came out was a research paper which was complex and unique at a national level – Dendrochronological development of four tree-ring series, two of the species Pinus Mugo and two for Kotschy Rhododendron species in Retezat National Park and Rodna National Park. I got a 10 and congratulations at the graduating exam, all my efforts from all those years had been fully rewarded.”

Also during university years he met Oana, who today is his wife. After nine years together, of which three as a married couple, the young Batîr couple now focuses on little Sergiu, the offspring who will soon be one year old.

The year 2013, however, was also marked by a personal tragedy.

“My father, my mentor and the ultimate family man died suddenly,” says Ionuț. “He had a stroke and was gone. My dad was one in a million, after he died our entire temple fell apart.”

 

When a phone call changes your life course

In August 2013, Vasile Varvaroi, log purchasing manager at Holzindustrie Schweighofer Rădăuți, was looking left and right for a person to hire at the future working station the company was to open at the biomass power plant of Suceava.

Professor Roibu was one of the first people he called.

The answer? “Vasile, have you heard of Ionuț Batîr? He’s one of our graduates, he’s a smart, quick-witted, hardworking kid. I highly recommend him, he’d fit your needs perfectly. He’s one of the best products of our nursery of forestry specialists!”

Six years later, Vasile remembers the beginnings: “Our first meeting, the so-called interview, took place on a terrace. Atypical for a multinational, but somehow normal for a young forestry graduate. He came confident, with a big smile on his face. I told him that at the beginning he would work in a container, surrounded by dust - as it was a working site - that he’d work in shifts, day and night. And he said, on the spot, ‘YES, I agree. I want to prove that I can do it and after I succeed you’d consider if I deserve and can do something more’.”

And he succeeded!

“I was hired as a person in charge with receiving biomass at the plant which was under construction in Suceava, not as a forestry engineer,” remembers Ionuț. “I defeated a great deal of my fears then, the access to the warehouse was pretty difficult, I was working the second shift – from 16:00 to 22:00 – and I was walking for about two kilometres to the bus station. I was a ‘dragon’, I was passing by a dog pound and at the end of my first working day I could not even take a step in the dark - I had to call for a taxi. But, in time, things calmed down, the dogs got accustomed to my presence and I ran out of problems. I was even bringing them food, because I grew fond of them.”

In a short while, he gained everyone’s trust, admiration and respect, so no one was surprised when, in the autumn of 2014, he moved to the company’s round wood purchasing department in Rădăuți and was given the helm of yet another pioneering project for the sawmill: the coordination of the newly-established department for the control and certification of the purchased wood.

 

The family man hungry for success

The move to the Rădăuți office, with new responsibilities, coincided with Oana being hired as a production planning technician at the sawmill in November 2014.

“Between November 2014 and March 2015 we commuted every day between Rădăuți and Suceava, until we finally moved to Rădăuți, where we remained for exactly one year, until 1 March 2016,” recounts Ionuț.

After setting up the control and certification department in Rădăuți, a successfully-completed start-up, a new opportunity appeared - this time at the Sebeș sawmill, also in the round wood department.

“I was hungry for success and didn’t take too long to accept the offer, it was only afterwards that I realised I was uprooting my life without having any guarantee that Oana will also get a job,” says Ionuț.

So the couple packed their belongings and headed to Sebeș, an area they didn’t know, where both had to join a new group, a new community, with traditions and rules which were different from the ones in Bukovina.

In Sebeș, he started as the head of the round wood department, the one doing the back office for the purchasing department. “I do not invent new things, I take on something somebody else did and try to improve it,” says Ionuț. “I like the people I can learn from and I did not lack mentors in my career both in Rădăuți and in Sebeș. I do not like being limited, each day has to be different, so I take full advantage of any opportunity that comes my way.”

The opportunity of the year 2017 was Timflow, the wood traceability system Holzindustrie Schweighofer implemented in Romania. Implementing Timflow in all sawmills in the country meant working close with Vienna-based Hannes Plackner, whom Ionuț counts as a mentor.

And Hannes shares the sentiment as well.

“I really enjoy working with Ionuț, who, in my experience, unites a goal-oriented attitude with cleverness,” he says. “Besides the most complex project we’ve been involved in - Timflow – there’s one more thing connecting us: we both became fathers only a few weeks apart last year. So, besides timber tracking or process charts, we can also discuss about our kids.”

 

An X-Ray of a job well done

Dan Bănacu, the general manager of Holzindustrie Schweighofer in Romania, is candid.

“I liked Ionuț from the first time I met him. A firm handshake, mindful and attentive to details that help him understand what he’s supposed to do and how he can do things to the best of his abilities. I liked his attitude - always open, sometimes critical and constantly constructive. He has the potential of a leader, he’s talented and confident.”

From the 23-year old who was receiving biomass, to setting up the control and certification department, to round wood, Timflow and some research work in the field of forestry legislation, to the now 28-year old specialist who was appointed mill manager for Holzindustrie Schweighofer Sebeș on 1 January 2019, Ionuț has done a bit of everything.

Being appointed in a management position caught him by surprise, but he accepted the challenge.

“At a group level a change was needed, something new had to come along,” he says. “It is a risk, it is a bet and I am afraid of failure, therefore I always focus on results. At the same time, so far in my life I didn’t have any major failure. And Sebeș for me now is exactly like a good car - which needs to be maintained and kept running. There are fantastic people here, people who deserve to be appreciated, who need to be taken out of their routines and steered towards showing their true worth, so that we function properly.”

At the end of the day, when one draws the line and looks behind, to all the experiences which had shaped their career and life, which is the final conclusion?

Ionuț does not flinch: “I am most proud of the way I was shaped. I was always supported and I am the result of the experiences I lived. I am content and I would like to thank all those people I worked with. We are like a mechanical watch, with each of its wheels in its place. An important detail I learned from Board Member Juergen Bergner was to find solutions before problems start to emerge. It’s exactly like in the FIFA Manager game, where Real Madrid is a team of stars which can be defeated by any other homogenous team that works together. It’s all about the power of the community, no one ever did anything by themselves."