Dairy veteran Jim Begg is stepping down from his role as director-general of Dairy UK and leaving the industry after 43 years.
Announcing his retirement ahead of the annual Dairy UK dinner this week, Begg said the time had come for him to “hand over the baton”.
No specific departure date has been set - Begg told The Grocer it would depend largely on when a successor was in place, but he expected to have left by October.
Begg entered the dairy industry straight from university in 1970, working for the Milk Marketing Board in Scotland. He held various roles with the board and other industry groups in the decades that followed, leading both The Dairy Industry Association and The Dairy Industry Federation.
He was instrumental in setting up Dairy UK in 2004, and said establishing it as the “first genuinely cross-industry political body in the world” remained one of the proudest moments of his dairy career.
Dairy UK aims to represent the entire dairy supply chain - including farmers and processors - and although its model has been criticised, Begg said he remained convinced it was the right way forward.
“We exhaust ourselves sometimes with internal battles caused by very, very difficult market conditions, but my objective throughout all of it has been to drive forward a common approach to everything.”
Dairy UK has started lining up potential successors to Begg, but would not give further details on its recruitment process.
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