Kiwifruit’s new man to build a legacy

It will build on the legacy left by outgoing chief executive Lain Jager.

“We’ve got offices of talented people in our major markets around the world,” Mathieson told Rural News.

“I will be focusing on our all being connected and working together for one global strategy.”

Mathieson says Jager did a “stunning job” over the last 10 years to ensure the right investment was made in the right parts of the organisation to ensure we are keeping our demand position ahead of supply.

“That has put us in a strong position with great teams of people around the world and a strong strategy for growth.

“It is a very exciting time to be appointed chief executive officer of Zespri so I can now build on that platform and take the organisation forward to our next chapter.”

A Zespri executive for 15 years, Mathieson has worked overseas; he moved to Singapore in 2015 to head Zespri’s global sales and marketing hub. He speaks fluent Japanese and lives with his wife and three children in Singapore.

Mathieson took over from Jager on Monday September 18.

“The next level for Zespri is looking at the whole supply chain/value chain and where we have made that investment and are bringing it together as one cohesive global strategy,” Mathieson says.

They have a strong growth strategy and the investment has been huge, focused on growing locations to improve the quality of fruit and the supply chains to ensure the right fruit is delivered to market in the right condition.

However, the bulk of investment in the last five years, and where he personally has been managing, has been in the marketplace.

“We’ve established offices in 22 markets around the world. We’ve created a sales and marketing hub in Singapore to ensure our markets are being fed with centre-of-excellence support in the various demand-creation functions like consumer marketing, trade marketing and sales.”

This is to ensure demand exceeds supply, to connect with and understand consumers and to enable Zespri teams to partner with distribution companies and retailers so that customers always get great quality.

Considerable marketing budget is spent on ensuring the Zespri brand is strongly resonating with consumers.

As chief executive, Mathieson will split his time 50/50 on focusing here in the heart of Zespri’s business and the New Zealand kiwifruit industry, and ensuring they are looking at all opportunities in the global marketplace.

He plans to spend sufficient time here to connect with growers, post-harvest companies and Zespri staff. He expects eventually to spend about one third of his time in NZ, one third in Singapore and one third in international markets to ensure he has a view of the “end-to-end global strategy”.

“I am incredibly excited about the opportunity and our mission to double sales by 2025 which is only seven years away.”