Announcement

In late 2008 the Soil Association offered to fund the appointment of a Trade Director to better represent the views of the Organic Trade. Even with their current restructuring, the Soil Association fully intends to honour this commitment, for which we are very grateful. The appointment is still scheduled to take place by 1st October 2009 as planned.

In the meantime, the OTB has received generous donations from five businesses to cover the interim period before a Trade Director is appointed. We have recruited Finn Cottle, who should be well known to many in the industry, for a 4 month period, to assist in the development of the OTB business plan and other key projects.

This work will lay the foundations both for the future development of the OTB and also to help scope out the work of the Trade Director for their appointment in October.

Finn will be contacting all members soon to introduce herself and to find out how she can help members develop their business and the organic trade sector. Her background is in business development, marketing, buying and innovation in a variety of companies including the Noble Foods Group, Sainsbury and Somerfield. Finn’s personal interest in organic business underlies her strong commitment to help all parties, big and small, both within the multiple environment and beyond into the healthfood and wholesale sectors.

Finn can be contacted at: finn@organictradeboard.co.uk

Finn’s Biography

I have worked within the UK food industry for over 20 years, with extensive experience of Buying, Innovation, Marketing and Strategy Development in two major supermarket groups. From starting my career as a Buyer at Sainsburys in 1987, I progressed through the ranks to hold a variety of Senior Buying positions there including Senior Manager of Dairy and Senior Manager of Fresh Foods Development. During my time at Sainsburys, I was very actively involved in the development of the Sainsburys Organic brand and the set up and running of the Sainsburys TOPs group ie Trading Organic Partnership.

After 23 years of city life in London, the Cottle family moved to Bristol in 2004 and I took up the position of Fresh Foods Buying Director at Somerfield where I managed a team of buyers across all the main fresh foods categories- Produce, Dairy, Meat, Bakery and Convenience products.

Over the last two years, I have complimented my retail experience by working as Marketing & Strategy Director at Noble Foods, a medium sized company who supply egg and egg products into most major retailers. During this time, I launched a number of brands and own brands into UK supermarkets and had valuable experience of building relationships from the other side of the desk. Organic Eggs were key products within the range and managing the market switch to Organic and Free Range from Cage Hen eggs was a major part of my strategy development work.

Since beginning of 2009, I have been working as a consultant and have carried out a number of projects for the Irish Food Board: I have been mentoring a number of smaller suppliers keen to break into the UK market.

I have always been extremely passionate about quality food, its provenance and uniqueness while being realistic about the comprehensive expectations of the retailer and the end consumer. All of my previous positions have required me to balance a range of foods produced either organically or conventionally to gain successful business results, so I am now excited about the prospect of focusing entirely on ‘raising the pace’ for Organic foods. I believe that there is huge potential for ‘great tasting’ food which has additional health benefits and is ethically produced – Organic has all of this which gives great opportunities for the future. I am looking forward to working with Organic producers to create a plan which will assure the best future growth.

When I am not working, I enjoy the ‘great outdoors’ and keeping fit. I have just completed the Bristol 10k and the Eton Supersprint Triathalon and am continuing my training for the Bristol Half Marathon in September.

I am married to Huw who is a teacher and have two girls, Louise who is doing GCSEs and Katie who is finishing her last year at Junior school.