Iceland Foods has promoted Kristian Barrett as its new chief operating officer, in a shake-up of its executive structure.
Barrett – who has spent seven years at Iceland, the last two as group retail director – started his new role in January.
In what is a brand-new position for Iceland, reporting into CEO Tarsem Dhaliwal, Barrett will take responsibility for Iceland and Food Warehouse stores, distribution, digital and retail ops, as well as supply chain.
The frozen supermarket has reshuffled the structure of its senior team following the high-profile poaching of group buying director Andrew Staniland and group chief digital and marketing officer David Devany by Asda last year. Staniland has since decided to instead join Morrisons, and started his new role as its group trading director this week.
Iceland has looked internally to replace both. In July The Grocer revealed that Paul Dhaliwal would take responsibility for buying in the newly created role of head of commercial.
Iceland said at the time it would not look to replace Devany directly.
Instead, Barrett will now take over some of Devany’s digital responsibilities. Iceland has not confirmed whether it plans to recruit a new group retail director to replace Barrett.
It marks Barrett’s latest promotion since joining Iceland as stores director in 2017. He previously spent a decade in a number of operations roles at Asda, rising to senior director of operations.
Prior to that he spent five years at Somerfield, before it was acquired by Co-op, after a seven-year spell at Morrisons.
Iceland confirmed his appointment, but did not provide further comment.
No comments yet