AHDB announces market development restructure

AHDB announces market development restructure

The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) is to restructure its exports, trade and consumer marketing teams to ensure it is ‘fit for the future’.

The restructure will be completed by April 2018 and is aiming at delivering savings in excess of £750,000 over two years, which AHDB states it intends to reinvest back into communications, events, online promotion, export and domestic marketing campaign activity.

Christine Watts, AHDB’s chief officer for communications and market development.

AHDB hopes that the restructure will enable it to achieve better value for money for farmers, growers and processors.

The proposals form part of a plan to move to a more “agile and streamlined” approach to consumer marketing campaigns, enhanced relationships with retailers and an export team assigned to ‘seize post-Brexit opportunities to open new markets’.

According to AHDB, the plans for change are driven by the need to have resource and capacity in the high-growth international export markets and the importance of changing consumer demand at home.

The proposals will also aim at export work with staff dedicated to building markets in the EU, Middle East/Africa and Asia Pacific countries.

Under the new structure there will be new heads of export roles for the red meat sector based on high growth markets, like Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East/Africa and, longer term, the Americas.

The new exports roles in the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific are said to reflect a drive from the industry to open up new markets for British products outside the EU and follow on from the decision in 2015 to appoint Karen Morgan as the UK’s first agriculture and food counsellor in China – a post funded by AHDB from its inception.

Christine Watts, AHDB’s chief officer for communications and market development, said: “AHDB export and marketing work is an important investment our farmers, growers and industry make through their levy, totalling around £16 million per year.

“We need to invest this money in the most efficient and effective way and, in a post-Brexit world, we need to be structured to deliver where we can make the most positive impact.

“We recognise that change is always difficult but we are committed to delivering a world-class service for our farmers, growers and industry.

“By making some tough decisions, as we have already done in the recent past, we will have an export, trade and marketing team which is flexible, closely aligned and working to a common agenda.”

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