Doug Scott quits Carlsberg-Tetley

Doug Scott, director of marketing at Carlsberg-Tetley, is leaving after 14 years with the company, following the failed merger with Bass.

He leaves on September 19 without another job to go to, after spending more than two years commuting every week between his home in Edinburgh and C-T’s offices in Burton.

He says uncertainty about the future of the business dissuaded him and his family from a permanent move.

He adds: “There has been a lot of strain on me personally in the past couple of years. I want some time to take stock with my wife and children and will then look for a new opportunity.”

News of his departure comes at a period of great upheaval for the country’s third-biggest brewer.

Ebbe Dinesen, the company’s Danish chief executive, has been working on a strategic review of the business which is expected to lead to job cuts and the closure of at least one of C-T’s five breweries.

The company lost several senior marketers during the period of uncertainty before Margaret Beckett, President of the Board of Trade, blocked the planned Bass takeover in June, and its brands have suffered from under investment.

Whoever takes over Scott’s post will oversee increased marketing spend on the company’s core brands – Tetley’s bitter, Carlsberg lager and Calder’s Cream Ale. Funds will be diverted from secondary brands such as Castlemaine XXXX.

Scott joined the company in 1983, when he left Seagram for the Alloa Brewery Company, the brewing, wholesaling and pub retailing subsidiary of Allied Breweries in Scotland.

In 1992, when Danish brewer Carlsberg formed C-T as a joint brewing venture with Allied Domecq, he became sales director for C-T in Scotland and then C-T director of marketing in 1995.

See story, page 10