Aminata Diop, Deputy Executive Director and Director of Semmaris’s Logistics and Regions Business Unit

“One of my biggest current projects involves creating a second market of national interest (MIN) in the Paris region,” says Aminata Diop, Director of the Logistics and Regions Business Unit and Deputy Executive Director of Semmaris, the semi-public company that manages the Rungis MIN (94) and an Afilog member since 2010. Although she speaks about it with humility and passion, this project of public interest is highly ambitious.

Created more than 50 years ago, when Paris’s wholesale markets were relocated to Val-de-Marne, the Rungis MIN is now regarded as the world’s largest fresh-produce market. “It encompasses 1,200 companies, 3 million metric tons of goods pass through it every year, and it supplies fresh products to 60% of the population of the Paris region,” Aminata Diop notes. Half a century after its inauguration, the Rungis market is reaching capacity and its infrastructure is showing its age. “We are also anticipating rising demand, as the population grows,” says the Director of the Logistics Business Unit. “At the State’s request, we therefore began working five years ago on an extension of the MIN in Val-d’Oise. We now need ‘a second Rungis’ to provide more space and respond to changes in the sector, particularly in logistics.”

Agoralim—the name of this future market, complementary to the Rungis market, whose first buildings will be delivered in 2028—will cover 120,000 to 130,000 m² in Goussainville (95). It will place greater emphasis on today’s environmental challenges, seeking to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. “We are increasingly implementing decarbonized logistics solutions and clean refueling stations.” Designed as a genuine ecosystem, Agoralim is also expected to host training and education centers focused on “eating well,” as well as research activities.

Conducting in-depth work on integrating the market into the city is also among the responsibilities of the Logistics Business Unit, led by Aminata Diop, who overlooks none of the potential impacts. MIN-related activities have a significant effect on life across the intermunicipal area. The new development project must therefore ensure optimal integration to gain greater public acceptance, and substantial work is being done on flows and mobility.

When she joined in 2015 as a project manager, Aminata Diop’s role was to “grasp the reality of the 1,200 companies that are part of the MIN, understand each business, assess volumes, and gain a detailed understanding of what each of those companies does in order to meet their needs precisely.” She was quickly entrusted with the “logistics and development” department. In 2016, Semmaris’s expertise was called upon to create Lumin’Toulouse, which will manage the Toulouse Occitanie MIN. “Semmaris’s business is evolving, and its capacity to manage one of the world’s largest markets is leading it to offer its services to other markets in France,” Aminata Diop says enthusiastically. “We are now in discussions with around ten other regional markets, and we are considering becoming involved in the management of one or two additional markets within the next two to three years.”

Aminata Diop holds a master’s degree in regional planning and urban development from Paris X, as well as a degree from the Paris Val de Seine School of Architecture. She has notably worked for the Île-de-France departmental directorate for infrastructure and transport, mainly on corporate real-estate issues. “I was a project officer at ORIE (the Regional Observatory for Corporate Real Estate), where I discovered logistics topics, which I have been involved with ever since, for the past 10 years,” says Aminata Diop. “What I enjoy in my day-to-day professional life is thinking about an overall logistics system, rather than just one market. At the Rungis MIN, we work on the strategic developments of agrologistics and the agri-food supply chain.” Evidence of the importance afforded to logistics within an establishment such as the Rungis MIN, Aminata Diop is also a member of Semmaris’s Executive Committee (Comex).