Glisten has announced plans to unify its savoury snack businesses into a single operating unit.
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The UK snack and confectionery group said that the move would allow it to capitalise on “significant growth opportunities”.
The unit, which brings together Dormen Foods, Snacks Unlimited and Lindum Foods, will be headed by David Collard in the newly-created position of divisional MD.
Collard said that the rationalle behind the move was to grow Glisten’s brands through “consumer led insight” and “appropriately focused innovation”.
“The primary reason for the merger was to give far greater focus to our commercial operation, with the efficiencies this has brought being reinvested into people and market insight which will help to lay the foundations for future growth. Operationally we are now able to give suppliers greater scale in our negotiations which we believe will bring benefits to the business over time,” Collard told just-food.
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By GlobalDataThe combined business includes the Dormen’s brand of premium nuts, Weight Watchers snacks and crisps, produced under licence, own label savoury snacks and specialist travel snacks.
The commercial functions for both Snacks Unlimited and Dormen Foods have been fully integrated, Glisten said. The sales function has been split between retail and foodservice to give “greater focus” on the growth opportunities.
Retail sales are headed by Tom Cumiskey, who recently joined Glisten from Northern Foods, and foodservice sales by Neil Goodwin.
“The merging of Dormen’s Foods, Snacks Unlimited and Lindum Foods under the new savoury snacking division means that the brands will be working very closely together on all areas of the business, including research and development,” Collard revealed.
“All the technical and development functions now fall under one Technical and NPD controller. This will enable us to be more focussed and efficient with our development resource and ensure that our technical standards and product quality are monitored to the same exacting levels,” he added.
Lindum Snacks will operate as an autonomous business unit within Savoury Sancking focusing on the travel sector and headed by Robert Motley.
