Fonterra names De Petrini as APMEA managing director

Fonterra Co-operative Group has named Pascal De Petrini as managing director of its Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa (APMEA) business unit. The APMEA business unit comprises all of Fonterra’s consumer operations across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. De Petrini will join Fonterra at the beginning of November and takes over from Johan Priem, who has been acting managing director APMEA since May.

Fonterra CEO Theo Spierings says, “Pascal is a strong, strategic people leader with a proven track record in delivering significant growth as well as turnarounds in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) businesses. He has more than 25 years’ experience across the markets of APMEA and in senior leadership roles at Danone, which will greatly benefit our consumer, nutritional and foodservice growth in Asia. I am delighted that we have someone of Pascal’s strengths and experience joining Fonterra.

“Johan Priem will continue to lead the Asia, Middle East and Africa regions until the New Year and will then take over the development of our approach to food safety and quality as well as support the globalisation of our corporate social responsibility and sustainability programmes. I would like to thank Johan for his leadership of the APMEA business over the past few months and look forward to his continuing leadership for a critical part of our business going forward.

“I would also like to thank Ian Palliser for the role he has played in food safety and quality following our recent precautionary recall. Ian will hand over to Johan in the next few months and begin to transition back to his normal role leading one of our strategic initiatives as previously announced in July,” Spierings says.