Produce World has restructured its business into three divisions, which it claims will make it more responsive to customer needs.
The vegetable and potato giant will be split into PW Burgess Farms, PW Butterwick and Produce World, which will all report into a new holding company called PW Produce Group.
PW Burgess Farms will handle the group’s own farming operations, with individual managers for each crop. The brassica division will come under PW Butterwick, while the root, potato and allium business will be Produce World. Each group MD or CEO will report to executive chairman Neil Fraser.
The leaders of each divisions will be Jason Burgess as MD of PW Burgess Farms, William Burgess as CEO of Produce World, and new arrival David Betts-Gray, who previously worked for Premier Foods, as MD of PW Butterwick.
“We believe that this new way of working will make the business even more responsive to the needs of our customers and sustainable for the future,” said William Burgess, CEO of Produce World.
Burgess admits that the current bad weather has put overall production three to four weeks behind schedule adding that the business will now look to expand its own growing operation.
He explained: “Farming is an increasingly important part of our business, and separating farming into its own division will give it its own voice.
“We don’t want to start growing everything ourselves as we want to continue to work closely with our growing partners, but we believe that in the long run being more in charge of our own production is a good place to be. We are actively looking at expanding and in talks to buy more land; having Jason in charge of farming will take us into that new era.”
