JW Filshill managing director Simon Hannah is to replace the retiring Sam Wilcox as chairman of Unitas at the end of January. This forms part of a leadership restructuring from the company in which the board has been reduced from 16 to 12 members.
The buying group’s restructure has been created in order to make sure it is a cross-section of retail, foodservice, on trade and specialist member categories. In order to facilitate this, Regal Wholesale, JW Gray and Co, East End Foods and Time Wholesale have offered to leave the board.
“I’m honoured and excited to be taking on the role of chairman of Unitas,” said Hannah. “There is a lot of ambition and energy within our membership and a lot of talent and experience within our board and execs. Our first very successful year has created an excellent platform for our members and suppliers to accelerate our growth together.”
These developments tie in with Unitas’ recent announcements for 2020, which include a full rebrand of its foodservice side of the business and an extension of its Plan for Profit guides.
Read more: Unitas sets out future plans
As well as this, with immediate effect all board meetings will now have a senior female member director attending in order to provide a vision and promote a pipeline of future female applications.
Darren Goldney, Unitas managing director, said: “The role of Unitas is to champion independent business and champion brand partners. We are better served in doing that when our leadership team can be representative and nimble and this critical part of our evolution will help us on our journey to be a first choice partner.”
Read more: John Mills and Unitas to part ways
The new Unitas board is now as follows:
Simon Hannah- JW Filshill
Greg Suszczenia- AG Parfetts & Sons Ltd
Manish Dhamecha- Dhamecha Foods Ltd
Asim Sarwar- United Wholesale (Scotland) Ltd
Jim Cummiskey- Failte Foods Ltd
Andrew Wild- Wilds
Nick Ramsden- DB Ramsden & Co Ltd
Kali Mulchandani- Imperial Cash & Carry Ltd
James Russell- Blakemore Wholesale
Marcus Singh- Hyperama plc
Jay Suterwalla- Sutaka UK Ltd
Amaan Ramzan- United Wholesale Grocers Ltd
