Young’s Seafood has made two board-level appointments as part of an effort to focus on virtual integration.
The British producer and distributor of frozen, chilled and fresh seafood named Scott Johnson, who has been with Young’s since 2005, to its operating board as its new technical director. It also promoted Stuart Caborn, who was already a member of the operating board, to chief supply chain and procurement officer.
“Young’s Seafood Limited has made some changes to the company’s leadership structures to further its key strategic priorities of growing sales and driving innovation and efficiency across its supply chain, through virtual integration,” the company said in a press release. “Young’s Seafood Limited’s virtual integration philosophy encourages the business and its key suppliers to work together to progress innovation and efficiency ideas that allow all parties to gain a competitive advantage within their markets. This philosophy has already led to a number of successes and the business is now eager to extend the application, discipline and benefits of virtual integration further across the company,”
Johnson, who has held a number of senior technical leadership roles at Young’s including the company’s raw material quality assessment and laboratory services, will now have responsibility for product safety, legality, quality and integrity across the group and will play a key role in driving the company’s ethical trading agenda, according to the company. Johnson replaces Mike Mitchell, who stepped down from the position last year.
“Sharing Technical best practise across our business will ensure that Young’s has in place a Technical framework that is both industry leading and fit for the future,” Johnson said. “I am hugely excited about the opportunities and rigour that delivering the ‘One Young’s’ strategy, through our Technical functions, will bring to our business.”
Johnson will lead the roll-out of the “One Young’s” strategy through technical functions, sharing best practice technical implementation and innovation, at all Young’s locations across the U.K. Johnson has more than 20 years of experience in the seafood industry= and has a degree in food production and food science from Glasgow University.
Caborn, formerly Young’s purchasing director, will take board-level responsibility for the application of the company’s virtual integration agenda across its purchasing and inbound supply chain, including raw material ordering and Polarfrost, along with responsibility for CSR and packaging development, the company said.
“Leading the wider supply chain operating functions of Young’s through the next strategic phase of our business is a truly exciting prospect,” Caborn said. “Virtual integration is a wider business philosophy that is about true collaboration, both internally and externally, linking the resources of one or more of our strategic partners into a project team, to collaboratively drive value into the complete value chain.”
An architect of Young’s virtual integration philosophy, Caborn led the re-design of the procurement function following a corporate restructuring and is now responsible for leading company-wide global sourcing initiatives. Caborn is responsible for sourcing raw materials, goods and services from over 2,000 suppliers in 50 countries and also handles financial raw material forecasting programs and hedge programs linked to category analysis across packaging, ingredients and seafood. He has degrees from the University of Humberside and Harvard Business School and has 17 years of experience in the industry, including stints at Findus Group, Cott Beverages, Barlow Group, Kingspan and Railpart.
“I am pleased to announce the appointment of Scott Johnston to the Operating Board and the expansion of Stuart Caborn’s role on the Board,” Young’s Chief Executive Pete Ward said. “Scott’s technical knowledge, experience and reputation are respected by internal and external stakeholders alike and Stuart’s work to drive our Virtual Integration strategy is outstanding. Their expertise is sector-leading and I strongly believe that these appointments will help to drive our business strategy and our mission of inspiring people to love fish now and for generations to come.”
