David Murray: the Pladis boss bringing fun to the digestive

The McVitie’s Chocolate Digestive is turning 100 in 2025. And no other biscuit is more deserving of a party, says David Murray, UK & Ireland MD of parent company Pladis.

“It’s the king of our portfolio,” he says. While Murray is staying tight-lipped on the details – “no spoilers” – he promises “the best party ever. You’ll want to be invited… I know I’m being humorous, but it’s serious.”

Murray sits at the head of a boardroom table in Pladis’ Chiswick Park HQ. The table is piled high with the company’s standout innovations of 2024, including Jaffa Cakes Cola Bottle, Rich Tea The Cocoa One, Seriously Chocolatey Digestives, Gold Digestives, McVitie’s Signature and Jacob’s Bites.

Biscuits are big business for Pladis. McVitie’s, Jacob’s and Carr’s brought in a combined £681.1m last year [NIQ 52 w/e 7 September 2024] and will reach a collective age of 554 this year. Carr’s is the oldest, founded in 1831, followed by McVitie’s in 1839 and Jacob’s in 1851.

“With that heritage comes responsibility,” says Murray. “We have these brands in our hands for a short period of time in the overall scheme of things. Our job is to hand them off to the next group of people who are going to do their bit for the next 200 years.”

Compared with its biscuit brands, Pladis itself is a relatively new company. It was formed in 2016, following the acquisition of United Biscuits by Turkey’s Yildiz Holding two years earlier. In its short history, the company has already had three UK & Ireland bosses: long-serving UB boss Jon Eggleton, former KP Snacks CEO Nick Bunker and Murray, who was recruited in 2019.

“I’d spent 25 years at PepsiCo, this incredible company with brands at its heart… When the [Pladis] challenge came my way, I said: ‘OK, this sounds interesting. Could I be part of making McVitie’s loved again?’”

Murray’s ambition from the outset was to bring PepsiCo’s “confidence” to Pladis, or to “bring its mojo back”. Just months into the role, however, his plans were scuppered: he became stranded in London during the first Covid lockdown.

Plans for his family to relocate from Ireland were delayed due to travel restrictions, leaving him holed up in a Hammersmith apartment, alone. “I’m staring out the window, looking at my Tesco Express, going: ‘Can I go to talk to some people in the shop?’” Murray recalls.

But lockdown also presented an opportunity for Pladis. “There was a retreat to well-known, trusted brands in Covid. It wasn’t just biscuits; we saw that across the board.”

Indeed, accounts filed at Companies House by United Biscuits revealed McVitie’s and Jacob’s “performed particularly strongly” in the year to 31 December 2020, with sales growing by 4.1% to £867.5m.

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The trouble instead came after the shock of the first lockdown. In 2021, Pladis’ top line in the UK & Ireland slipped back from £772.2m to £766.8m thanks to a “slower than expected” post-Covid recovery and soaring input costs.

That was just the start of its woes. “Inflation went mental, and people started to make a value judgement. We didn’t see them completely trade out of brands, but they traded to a price point.”

Higher prices coupled with an innovation pipeline that “hands up… probably wasn’t strong enough” led to two years of volume declines for McVitie’s.

Innovation focus

So in 2024, innovation was a key focus. That helped the biscuit brand keep its volumes more or less flat – down just 0.5%, despite inflationary pressures [NIQ 52 w/e 7 September 2024]. It was the result of years of work behind the scenes, says Murray.

“We did this demand space analysis in 2021/22 where we got really deep, conducting 4,000-5,000 interviews to understand: why, what, when, where and with whom are people snacking? It gave us incredible insight.”

The research has inspired 70 pieces of innovation by Pladis to date, resulting in “an abundance of riches” for its biscuit and snacking brands.

“We haven’t had any difficulty getting the retailers to embrace it [the innovation], because they know this is what brings shoppers down the aisle,” says Murray.

He’s particularly proud of Jacob’s Bites, a range of “generously seasoned” crackers aimed at younger shoppers; McVitie’s Signature, a premium biscuit range targeted at evening snacking; and potentially Pladis’ most “divisive” NPD yet: Jaffa Cakes Cola Bottle.

“We haven’t had any difficulty getting the retailers to embrace innovation, because they know this is what brings shoppers down the aisle”

All three of these innovations demonstrate the kind of confidence Murray had hoped to bring over from PepsiCo. If all goes to plan, these moves will flourish under his new leadership team, which was finalised with the appointment of Taryn-Lisa Mollé-McConnell as vice president of R&D in May.

“The two years of Covid made it really difficult for us to recruit, to build a culture, because we were still so young,” Murray explains. “Now we’ve an incredible team, a mix of people that have been in the business quite a while and new folks that have come in.”

Nine of Pladis’ 13 leadership positions are now held by women, which “has been an incredible step change for us in terms of the mix of thinking and the diversity it brings”. And despite offering a hybrid working model, “we try and get together at least three days a week because we need to get to know each other”.

Now he’s “fixed the fundamentals”, Murray is focusing on fun in 2025. “For Jaffa, there’s going to be another flavour no one wants”, while there’s “excitement and variety” to look forward to as part of Chocolate Digestives’ 100th birthday celebrations.

In the meantime, Murray will continue to knuckle down on his mission, while modelling his trademark “humble confidence”.

As he sums up: “We’re very proud of what we’re building, but we’re far from finished.”