Unitas Wholesale has announced changes to its board leadership structure, reducing the number of members in the board from 16 to 12.
The company said the move has been planned since the merger of Landmark Wholesale and Today’s Group in September 2018.
Regal Wholesale, JW Gray and Co, East End Foods and Time Wholesale offered to resign their positions to facilitate the new structure.
The board has elected Simon Hannah, managing director of JW Filshill, to the role of chairman, effective from the end of this month when Sam Wilcox retires.
“I’m honoured and excited to be taking on the role of chairman of Unitas,” Hannah said.
“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.”
The company said the new board structure will ensure a cross section of members within retail, foodservice, on trade and specialist member categories. In addition, all the board meetings will have a senior female member director attending in recognition of the need for further diversity.
The move is expected to promote a pipeline of future female applicants for 2020 and beyond.
“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,” said Darren Goldney, managing director at Unitas.
The new Unitas Wholesale Board members are: 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) and Amaan Ramzan (United Wholesale Grocers Ltd).