The Co-operative Food restructuring its supply chain management as part of a wider plan to strengthen the senior management team.
Under the new structure, Sean Toal, chief operating officer, will lead the stores, service delivery and supply chain teams, and two new executive roles – service delivery director and supply chain director – have been announced to support him in this role.
Cheryl Marshall takes up the role of service delivery director, moving across from her group role in charge of the Unity Programme.
Mark Hale, who was director of food IS and supply chain, becomes supply chain director, extending his current supply chain accountabilities to include the logistics depots.
Howard Reed, has taken up the new role of food chief information officer. He has over 20 years’ experience in IT in retail, mostly with Asda and, more recently, with New Look, where he was group IT and change director. He has broad expertise of IT across stores, supply chain, logistics, e-commerce and mobile.
Mike Osmond, Steve Bailey, David Roberts and Debs Gleeson remain respectively as commercial, finance, property and HR directors.
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A new role has been created of customer director reporting directly to chief executive Steve Murrells, who took over the reins of The Co-operative Food last July. That role is being taken by Andrew Mann, who currently director of insight and loyalty at Sainsbury’s.
Murrells said: “Everyone within the new food executive team will have shared responsibilities and clear and aligned accountabilities for driving the performance of our food business, concentrating on delivering quality and value for our customers and an enhanced experience at store level, as we did over the important Christmas and New Year period when our stores traded strongly on the back of an improved underlying performance during the second half of 2012.”
In the three weeks ending 5 January, total sales in Co-operative food stores grew by 2.4 per cent on the corresponding period last year and were 2.2 per cent higher on a like-for-like basis. The group’s convenience stores did particularly well, with like-for-like sales up 5.5 per cent over the same period, driven by targeted promotions and a new brand advertising campaign.
