General Manager of R&D Advanced Nutrition

The Client

Fonterra, headquartered in New Zealand, is one of the world’s largest exporters of dairy products, with nearly 30% of the world’s dairy exports handled by the company, which has an annual revenue of roughly $22 billion New Zealand dollars. A leader in dairy science and innovation, the owner of a significant portfolio of brands in Asia and the Pacific, and a partner to many of the world's leading food companies.

The Challenge

Committed to being a leader in dairy innovation, Fonterra was seeking a new General Manager of R&D Advanced Nutrition at their headquarters in New Zealand. This individual had to be a proven leader capable of managing highly qualified technical teams, have a strong science background, ideally someone with a PhD, and have deep technical experience of specialty ingredients and their nutritional impact. The challenge was to find a capable leader with a background in the commercialization of science.

The Solution

This was an exceptionally complex international search assignment. We identified major hubs of talent across Europe, particularly in Ireland, the UK, France, Denmark, & the Netherlands, as well as the US and Asia. We successfully identified a number of candidates with strong educational backgrounds in science who had progressed through technical career tracks into commercial roles across some of the world's largest and most innovative nutrition and ingredient businesses. We presented a number of candidates to Fonterra for consideration, and after an extensive and robust interview process, they selected a brilliant candidate from Danone Europe. There are two other candidates that Fonterra is committed to maintaining a relationship with over the next 12-24 months for possible positions across their global teams too.