McBride has appointed Matthias Kreysel to the newly created role of chief R&D officer.
Kreysel will join the maker of own-label household and personal care products this month from Ecolab, where he led global laundry R&D and served as acting vice-president of marketing for the EMEA region. He will report directly to McBride CEO Chris Bull and join the executive management team.
Kreysel, who has a PHD in organic chemistry, brings to the role more than 20 years’ experience of product development work in laundry and household cleaning and has held senior R&D roles at Ecolab and Henkel, working in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
McBride created the role of chief R&D officer to better co-ordinate the work of the 170 R&D staff based at technical centres in Europe and Asia.
In a bid to improve knowledge sharing across the group, it has also introduced centres of excellence around product categories.
Kreysel’s appointment follows the creation of two other senior roles this summer - designed to give McBride a more globalised operating structure following years of expansion overseas.
McBride promoted the MD of the UK business Colin McIntyre to chief operating officer and gave Greg Krol, the MD of the Central and Eastern European business, the role of chief commercial officer.
This week, McBride reported a 1% increase in like-for-like sales to £813.9m for the year to 30 June and a 2% increase in adjusted operating profits to £29.5m.
