AgroFresh makes executive appointments

Post-harvest specialist AgroFresh has announced four key appointments to its leadership team enhancing its capabilities in global operations, information technology, digital solutions and global talent.

Ian MacKellar has been appointed as chief operations officer, Claudio Rodrigues has been appointed chief information officer, Bradford Warner has been appointed executive director of digital and data business and Kristi Reinholz has been appointed chief human capital officer.

Chief executive Clint Lewis said the appointments would bolster the company’s capabilities and enhance its ability to support customers.

“As a global company with operations, employees and customers of varying sizes and complexities across the major produce-growing regions, it is imperative that we have leaders with the experience and expertise to both enable our business and to better our ability to enable our customers’ business,” said Lewis.

“These new leaders will help strengthen our operations from supply chain and external supplier relationships to direct customer service support; lead our global IT strategy; continue to advance our FreshCloud digital quality platform and help bring the best talent to our organisation. In addition, our global training and development program will equip our colleagues worldwide with skills needed to be the best they can be in support of our customers.”

MacKellar has over 30 years of manufacturing and supply chain experience. Most recently, he was the site leader for Pfizer’s McPherson facility in Kansas. He will lead the global operations group and will ensure the company delivers consistent, high-quality products and service that differentiate AgroFresh from the competition.

As chief information officer Rodrigues will use his 29 years of IT and cybersecurity experience to strengthen the focus and impact of AgroFresh’s global IT strategy. He most recently served as executive director and head of IT for Noven Pharmaceutical.

Warner will lead efforts in the development and execution of a comprehensive digital business strategy and identify new opportunities for AgroFresh to expand its end-to-end digital quality inspection platform, FreshCloud, to new regions and in new crops. Warner has more than 25 years of experience and most recently led the commercial development of agricultural data-as-a-service and ESG offerings for AGI Digital.

Reinholz will lead the global Human Capital strategies to attract, develop and retain an innovative customer-focused organisation to deliver the AgroFresh mission and meet the ever-changing needs of the company’s customers. Most recently, Reinholz served as the chief people officer for Unilever North America.

“These new leaders complement previous changes that we’ve made to our senior leadership team in the areas of commercial and R&D over the last 18 months. We now have our senior team complete to further advance our vision to be the leader in the post-harvest segment of the fresh fruit and produce industry,” said Lewis.