Dairy Crest to merge marketing teams in head office re-shuffle

The British dairy processor currently boasts two marketing departments – one for food, the other for dairy. Food handles the marketing of Dairy Crest cheese and spreads brands including Cathedral City, Country Life, and Clover.  The latter deals with fluid milk brands such as Frijj.

Speaking with DairyReporter.com, a spokesman for Dairy Crest revealed plans to combine the marketing teams. Dairy Crest marketers will no longer work on individual brands following the re-organisation, said the spokesman. Instead, they will work across all of Dairy Crest’s 10 dairy brands.

Through the re-organisation, Dairy Crest hopes to create a sound, consistent marketing strategy across these core brands

Combined dairy marketing insight​

“The main change is that we will combine our two marketing divisions into one,” ​said the spokesman.

“At the moment we have a food marketing division, which markets cheese and spreads products. Then we have our dairy marketing division, which markets milk products. We plan to combine these two marketing divisions into one.”​

“Marketing of our products will become easier, we will have more critical mass, and it will be easier to share insight,” ​he said.

The spokesman confirmed that some savings would be made as a result of marketing department merge, but refused to speculate on possible redundancies.

“There will be savings through the combination of our two current marketing divisions, although it has not actually been decided it will be implemented.”​

“We cannot say at the moment whether or not there will be redundancies in our marketing divisions,” ​said the spokesman.

Re-shuffle brings HQ “up to speed”​

Dairy Crest announced plans last week to re-organisation its board and senior management structure. As well as cutting costs by at least £5m per year, the re-shuffle is expected to help “facilitate best practice, eliminate duplication and maintain Dairy Crest’s strong focus on profit delivery.”​

The shake-up is the latest in a long-line of measures executed by Dairy Crest in an attempt to “simplify”​ its business and improve business efficiencies.

Dairy Crest now hopes to bring its head office “up to speed” ​with the rest of its simplified business through the re-shuffle.

“Saving money wasn’t the whole idea behind the re-shuffle. There will be cost savings, but that was not our only aim,” ​said the spokesman.

“Our business has become much simpler in recent years. This move has brought head office up to speed with the rest of the business,” ​he concluded.