Long-serving Managing Director of the Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS), Hamburg — 21 years with the foundation, Managing Director from 2005, listed since July 2026 as “Former Managing Director of Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung”. Based in the Greater Hamburg Area. M.Sc. Agricultural Economics.
Profiled from his own LinkedIn profile export (2026-08-14) — see Sources. ⟨Note: self-authored source; the profile is unusually terse (no education years, publications or languages listed), so this page is deliberately thin.⟩
Imported into the wiki on 2026-08-14 at Martin Pompéry’s request, together with Stefan Dierks and Tell Münzing.
Status ⟨2026-08-17⟩
- Role, resolved 2026-08-14: he is the proposed Team Leader for GIZ Tender 10036847 and the route to a consortium led by the Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung — see consortium constellation.
- ⟨Open: he has not been asked. Availability and willingness are unverified.⟩
- The assessment of his profile against the Team Leader ToR profile is held in the tender context: consortium constellation → Team Leader against the ToR profile.
Career
| Period | Role | Organization |
|---|---|---|
| 07/2026 – present | Former Managing Director (transition role as listed) | Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung |
| 2005 – present (21 yrs at HRNS) | Managing Director | Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung, Hamburg |
| 1992 – 2005 | Managing Director | E.D.E. Consulting |
| 1988 – 1992 | Project Manager and Expert for Extension | Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH |
⟨Inference: the profile carries both “Managing Director 2005 – Present” and “Former Managing Director … July 2026 – Present”, i.e. he appears to be in or just past a handover, not fully departed. Treat his current status as transitional until confirmed.⟩ Against this: Daily Coffee News (01.07.2026) reports Sorgenfrei and Hadem as successors, which reads as a completed handover — see HRNS § Leadership. The two readings are held open; only Opitz himself closes this.
⟨Lint 2026-10-12: “transitional until confirmed” rests on a LinkedIn export taken 2026-08-14, now two months old, and the handover it describes began 07/2026 — over three months ago. A handover that long is no longer plausibly in progress. ⟨Inference: the Daily Coffee News reading is the more likely of the two, and the profile line is probably just an unretired LinkedIn entry rather than evidence of a dual role. Not resolved here, because the source situation has not changed — but the balance between the two readings has, and the page should not go on presenting them as equally weighted.⟩ He is still the proposed Team Leader for a tender whose contract term starts 15.10.2026 — see open task 5.⟩
Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung
Per the profile: HRNS “promotes as an implementer sustainable development in the coffee sector. The foundation focuses on enabling farmer families globally to independently achieve a superior livelihood.” Note the self-positioning as an implementer, not a grant-maker or standards body.
⟨Background: HRNS is the foundation associated with the Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, one of the largest green-coffee trading groups; not stated in the profile and worth verifying before use.⟩
E.D.E. Consulting (1992–2005)
Managing Director, 13 years. The consulting company in the same group — see E.D.E. Consulting.
⟨Inference, load-bearing for the bid: this single CV line is what surfaced Vietnam as a possible second pilot country, via E.D.E.’s Hanoi office and Dak Lak coffee projects. The Vietnam evidence rests on search results only and is the weakest source class in the tender cluster; the fact of his E.D.E. tenure is not in doubt.⟩
GIZ (1988–1992)
Project Manager and Expert for Extension — i.e. agricultural advisory services, the discipline of getting knowledge and practice changes to smallholder farmers. Four years inside the commissioning agency of the tender SINE is bidding for.
Stated motivation
“Convinced of the Sustainable Development Goals and their power if we are serious about them. Committed to support coffee families and rural youth to be champions of processes strengthening their life perspectives.”
Top skills as listed: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, International Development.
Relevance to SINE
⟨Inference: drawn from the profile against existing wiki pages; not claims he has made about SINE.⟩
- Closest fit of the three imports to GIZ Tender 10036847. The tender asks for farmer-centric, participatory data governance in agricultural value chains across two pilot countries; his career is smallholder-facing implementation in exactly that setting.
- GIZ-side literacy. Four years inside GIZ plus decades as an implementing partner means familiarity with the commissioning logic, reporting expectations and extension-service reality the tender is embedded in — see the tender page’s noted staffing gaps.
- Coffee = EUDR/deforestation commodity. Direct adjacency to the SAFE project (GIZ) Team Europe Initiative on Deforestation-Free Value Chains.
- Producer-side counterpart to Stefan Dierks. Dierks sits on the buying side of the coffee chain (Tchibo, Melitta), Opitz on the producer/farmer-organization side — together they span both ends of the same value chain that PACT-style data exchange and Digital Product Passports need data from.
- Reciprocity test case. The Data Commons value of Reciprocity is hardest to make real for smallholders who supply the data and capture least of its value; an implementer with 20+ years of farmer-organization experience is the kind of reality check that claim needs.
- ⟨Inference: the July 2026 role change may mean availability for advisory or project work — plausible from the dates, not stated anywhere.⟩
Fit against the Team Leader profile ⟨added 2026-08-17⟩
He is the only candidate whose profile documents rather than argues the ToR requirements, with one gap (digital transformation / data governance) that Tell Münzing covers as Key Expert 1. Full comparison: consortium constellation → Team Leader against the ToR profile.
Open questions
- Availability and willingness for 56 fee days over twelve months, much of it workshop- and field-bound. The single largest unknown in scenario A′.
- Current status: fully retired, interim, or still bound to HRNS in some form? The profile carries both “Managing Director 2005 – Present” and “Former Managing Director, July 2026 – Present”.
- Is E.D.E. Consulting active in Vietnam today, and how is it related to HRNS in company-law terms?
- Which countries and programmes did he run at HRNS — relevant to the tender’s two pilot countries.
- His GIZ employment 1988–1992 must be disclosed in the eligibility self-declaration, which asks about prior employment with GIZ or its predecessor organisations without a time limit. Disclosure is not a disqualifier; omission would be the expensive mistake.
Sources
sources/people/2026-08-14-linkedin-michael-opitz.pdf— LinkedIn profile export, provided by Martin Pompéry, 2026-08-14. Markdown twin:sources/people/2026-08-14-linkedin-michael-opitz/2026-08-14-linkedin-michael-opitz.md.- Company link given in the profile:
www.hrnstiftung.org.
See also
- Stefan Dierks, Tell Münzing — imported from the same batch
- GIZ, Tender 10036847