Scotland Food & Drink has bolstered its senior team with four new appointments following the launch of a new 10-year national food and drink strategy, ‘Sustaining Scotland. Supplying the World’.
Amanda Brown joins the business from SAOS (Scottish Agriculture Organisational Society) where she was most recently seconded to Scotland Food & Drink to design and launch The Knowledge Bank, an industry market insights service. With over 30 years’ experience of working in the Scottish food and drink sector, Amanda takes on the role of programme director, responsible for ensuring the delivery of Scotland Food & Drink’s wide-ranging programme of projects which emanate from the new national strategy.
Fellow industry expert Carol Saunders, has been named as head of insights at The Knowledge Bank, bringing with her over 20 years’ experience working with brands like Coca-Cola, Heineken and Highland Spring. She will lead The Knowledge Bank team in identifying and developing new market opportunities to deliver sustainable growth for all businesses involved in the Scottish food and drink sector.
Gemma Gillespie joins from Beatson Cancer Charity as finance director, bringing extensive financial and corporate services experience across a variety of industries. To support the team through this next strategic chapter, Claire Bisset has also been promoted to the role of HR director, having been with Scotland Food & Drink for just under 10 years.
Iain Baxter, chief executive at Scotland Food & Drink, said: “As an organisation it is vital that we have the right talent and teams in place to aid our mission to build resilience within the sector, support our plans to grow faster than our competitors and to be the world’s most sustainable food-producing nations. These positions strengthen our senior leadership team allowing us to put our best foot forward as we aim to deliver on our strategy and become a £20 billion industry by 2028.”
