61
Fiona Dawson
Global president, Mars Food
Last ranked: 37
Dawson took up her new global role last month, leading a portfolio of Mars stalwarts including Uncle Ben’s and Dolmio. Formerly head of the UK chocolate business, Dawson has been at Mars since joining as a graduate in 1988, and is a former winner of The Grocer Cup following her leadership, as IGD president, in response to the growing obesity epidemic.
62
Andy Duncan
CEO, Camelot UK
Last ranked: NEW
Camelot has more than 47,000 terminals in the UK, and with average takings of £8,000 a year on lottery tickets alone, they’re in high demand. MD since 2011, Duncan was credited with turning around the long-term decline of its flagship game Lotto. Following the retirement of long-serving CEO Dianne Thompson last year, his challenge is to keep it up.
63
Paul Conway
Vice chairman, Cargill
Last ranked: 32
A sharp fall in commodities prices meant Cargill had a mixed 2014, but under Conway the commodities giant remains a force to be reckoned with, reporting a 41% jump in quarterly profits to $784m in January. Conway is increasingly focusing on China, where a spate of food safety scandals is opening up new opportunities for the company.
64
Tristram Stuart
Food waste campaigner
Last ranked: NEW
Young and charismatic, Stuart is the perfect person to make food waste an appealing issue to the masses. The author and campaigner’s charity Feedback has already spun off three national campaigns, including The Gleaning Network UK, which featured on a TV documentary starring Jamie Oliver just this month, and its profile is only growing.
65
Eric Herd
CEO, Farmfoods
Last ranked: NEW
The biggest recluse in the business? Very possibly. Yet just because Herd is quiet doesn’t mean he isn’t making big moves in the frozen food sector. Last year, a fierce investment in price points saw customers flood in and Farmfoods’ sales rocket by over 40%, even higher than Aldi’s like-for-like sales increases, putting the wind up larger rival Iceland.
66
Mary Berry/Paul Hollywood
Celebrity bakers
Last ranked: NEW
With the huge success of the Great British Bake Off, drawing in more than 10 million viewers per episode to its 2014 series, this unlikely pair have put baking back on the map – and baking products have hit new heights of popularity with UK shoppers.
Supermarkets now devote several bays to home baking products and existing bakery players like Dr Oetker have seen sales skyrocket.
Even brand new entrants to the category like Poundland have cashed in. The fixed price discounter hired celebrity baker Jane Asher to promote a range of bakery products from scales to cake mix, all priced at £1, which rapidly became its biggest and fastest selling range ever.
With Berry the new Delia, and Hollywood baking’s answer to George Clooney, there is no doubt the pair have sparked a bakery renaissance. And with a sixth series of GBBO heading to the BBC it looks likely to continue.
67
David Salkeld
CEO, Symington’s
Last ranked: 48
Salkeld has steered Symington’s through a period of rapid expansion, snapping up Ragu and Chicken Tonight from Unilever in 2011 and ready meal maker Tanfield Foods last October. Now eyes are on his next move, with whispers linking Symington’s to a sale or float. One priority will be fixing a 7% profit drop in its annual accounts despite a 5% sales boost.
68
Peter Blakemore
MD, AF Blakemore
Last ranked: 67
Led by Blakemore, Spar’s biggest wholesaler recorded a 7.4% increase in profits last year, alongside a 5% increase in sales, after reaping the rewards of a newly introduced price reduction strategy and the acquisition of two of its smaller rivals, Lowries and BA Cash & Carry. Blakemore is also investing in online, new hires and building a new export arm.
69
Mark Allen
CEO, Dairy Crest
Last ranked: 63
Allen may shed a tear over the loss of brands such as Frijj as part of Dairy Crest’s proposed sale of its dairies business to Müller, but there are reasons to be cheerful, too. The divestment will allow Dairy Crest to concentrate on its profitable butter and cheese division, and has been widely lauded as potentially “transformational” by analysts (though see p10).
70
Ian Macdonald
Chairman, SACN
Last ranked: NEW
The prof from Nottingham chairs SACN’s carbohydrates working group, which dropped a bombshell on the industry last summer by calling for the recommended daily limit of sugar intake to be halved. With SACN’s potentially seismic final report due out in the spring, Macdonald has so far shown he is anything but a patsy for the food and drink industry.
71
Gavin Darby
CEO, Premier Foods
Last ranked: 55
Streamlining its supply base and setting up jvs for Hovis and its powders business, Darby had just completed a £1.1bn restructuring plan last March when a profit warning from Morrisons triggered a 75% decline in its share price. But despite falling powder brand sales and an outcry over its treatment of suppliers, its shares are up in 2015 as the sales decline slows.
72
Danny Hazlehurst
UK property director, Lidl
Last ranked: NEW
As the big four freeze their previously relentless advance or start selling off existing stores, the discounters keep speeding up. Tasked with rapidly acquiring new stores for Lidl, Hazlehurst is thought to be focusing on the South East. However, MD Ronny Gottschlich is acutely aware of the importance of getting the site right, and with high demand, it won’t be easy.
73
Diana Hunter
CEO, Conviviality Retail
Last ranked: NEW
Proving there’s still life in the off-licence sector with the right model, Conviviality Retail, which owns the lively Bargain Booze chain, reported a 46% increase in half-year profits last month following its 2013 flotation. This week’s acquisition of GT News will add another 37 stores. It’s also developing new formats, and launched a mobile loyalty scheme app.
74
Kevin Brennan
CEO, Quorn
Last ranked: NEW
Quorn has been transformed since PE firm Exponent snapped it up for £205m in 2011. A lot of credit for that has to go to Brennan, achieving strong domestic and international growth on the back of (among other things) a fivefold increase in NPD, and an eightfold increase in advertising, even signing up Olympic hero Mo Farah. There’s even talk of an IPO.
75
Chris Mould
Chairman, The Trussell Trust
Last ranked: NEW
Powerful if only for his willingness to speak out about the depressing state of food poverty that exists in the UK, Mould proved himself to be an outspoken advocate for food banks during evidence to the Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector in June last year. He spoke, ominously, of a conversation with “someone in power” who warned him to think more carefully about how he framed the Trust’s figures.
Despite meeting such hostility on occasion, Mould has overseen a rapid growth in the demand for food banks since he took the reins in 2007, which fed fewer than 30,000 people a year when he started, and are estimated to feed more than a million this year.
And in the coming months there’ll be a growing need for the industry to pay attention to his insights, in particular in regards to the redistribution of surplus food, and the ways in which retailers can partner with charities to help alleviate food poverty in the UK.
76
Debbie Robinson
MD, Spar
Last ranked: NEW
Since Robinson joined Spar as MD in 2011, the symbol group has been steadily moving forwards, rolling out new and improved store formats and better quality own-label ranges. It’s also chalking up record service levels. And strong Christmas trading figures (up 3.5% on a like-for-like basis) put the symbol group on a strong footing for 2015.
77
Professor Chris Elliott
Academic
Last ranked: NEW
The professor of food safety and director of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast led a year-long review of the UK’s food system following the horsemeat scandal in 2013. His recommendations, including the establishment of a food crime unit, are now being implemented by the government and FSA, and he remains much in demand.
78
Bernard Deryckere
CEO, Alpro Europe
Last ranked: NEW
Alpro’s meteoric rise since it was founded in 1980 has accelerated under Deryckere in 2014, with a raft of NPD hitting chillers to capitalise on growing demand for dairy alternatives. The brand’s soya-based drink is now the third bestselling dairy drink in the UK, on the back of a 28.3% hike in value sales to £74m [Nielsen 52 w/e 11 October 2014].
79
Per Bank
CEO, Netto
Last ranked: NEW
Three years after leaving the UK with a £778m cheque in its pocket courtesy of Asda’s acquisition of its UK operation, Netto, led by CEO Bank, surprised everyone by returning in November, in partnership with Sainsbury’s. Its footprint is absolutely tiny, just 15 stores to begin with, but if it can make an acquisition of its own, it could be a force to be reckoned with.
80
Giles Brook
CEO, Vita Coco
Last ranked: NEW
Brook is a wanted man: it was he who brought about the explosion of coconut water in the UK, launching Vita Coco in 2010, and building sales to £23.7m through superb execution. Also the founder of healthy snack brand Bear, his entrepreneurial spirit saw Brook crowned the Entrepreneur of the Year at The Grocer Gold Awards in 2014.
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