Rachel’s hires marketing boss

Rachel’s Organic Dairy has appointed former Del Monte European marketing chief Neil Burchell to the newly created position of marketing director in an effort to drive sales of its branded products.

The appointment is the result of Rachel’s splitting the sales and marketing director role, with incumbent David Stacey taking the sales position (MW April 25).

Burchell, who takes up the post on August 19, joins from security and surveillance firm Reliance Security where he has been marketing director for the past two years. Previously he held a number of positions at Del Monte including European marketing director. Once at Rachel’s, Burchell may review the advertising business, held by Welsh agency FBA Group.

Don Gaidano, managing director of Rachel’s, says the new post was created to “develop more meaningful marketing strategies and programmes for Rachel’s existing product lines and customers”.

He adds that sales in branded products have grown and the company wanted to support this with the appointment of a marketer with experience in this area.

Rachel’s claims to be the UK’s first certified organic dairy. The 20-year-old company’s products include butter, cream and yogurt. This year it also rolled out a range of branded milk to supermarkets including Sainsbury’s and Tesco after a large-scale pilot to 10,000 homes.