Who is the new CEO at Carbery Group?

Jason Hawkins is the new chief executive officer (CEO) of the Carbery Group. It is the first time in 25 years that Group has appointed a new CEO.

While he joins the group from Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) he started and spent most of his career with Kerry Group.

He began his career as an accountant in Kerry’s graduate programme. He then went on to hold a number of key positions with Kerry in the US.

While there, he was responsible for the growth of several of Kerry’s businesses in North America.

In his most recent position with Kerry, as president of beverages and taste (US) he successfully led the business to significant growth and profitability.

After departing Kerry Group in July 2016, Hawkins took up the position of chief operating officer for Dairy Farmers of America’s (DFA) dairy ingredients business.

The co-operative, which is owned by 13,000 farmers and holds 30% of US milk production, gave him the understanding of how a co-op and large scale processing operates.

Ingredients growth

Hawkins was responsible for driving and delivering a customer-focused growth strategy with the aim to add value to DFA stakeholders.

DFA has substantial cheese, ingredients and flavours businesses similar to Carbery.

This experience will be invaluable to Carbery as it aims to grow in the future.

Hawkins’ background with Kerry, combined with his experience at DFA make him well suited to build Carbery’s business. It is likely that it was his flavours experience that caught the eye of Carbery’s board.

While the threat of a hard Brexit may challenge Carbery’s cheese business – which accounts for almost 25% of the country’s annual cheese output – the groups hugely successful flavours business, Synergy now contributes significantly to the bottom line and is growing rapidly.

What are the challenges

The big challenge for Hawkins will be to continue the growth story while keeping true to Carbery’s co-op roots.

He takes over at a time where it employs almost 600 people, operates from eight locations globally and had sales of €340m and profits of €37m last year.

Under former CEO Dan McSweeney’s direction, Carbery did not forget its farmer roots, consistently returning profits through the payment of leading milk prices – much to the envy of many other co-ops.

Hawkins has big boots to fill.

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