RH Amar appoints Justin Burbage head of new Commercial Team

Leading fine food brand owner and distributor RH Amar has announced changes that will see its sales and marketing teams brought together under one commercial team structure and CSR activity bolstered with newly created roles to drive the company’s CSR strategy.

Leading the new RH Amar Commercial Team, which will incorporate all RH Amar sales and marketing functions is board member Justin Burbage, who is promoted to the role of Commercial Director. Burbage joined RH Amar two years ago as Sales Director, joining from Bayer Consumer Healthcare.

Board member James Amar moves to become Strategy & CSR Director – a new director role which will oversee delivery of RH Amar’s three-year growth strategy and CSR activity.

Simon Fry, who has taken the decision to step down from the RH Amar board, moves from Marketing Director to take on the newly created role of CSR & Business Development Manager, reporting to James Amar. The new role will drive the CSR agenda across sustainability, charity and community and include overseeing the 10 per cent of profits which RH Amar donates to charity each year – with over £1.2m raised for good causes since 2013. The role will also focus on bringing new brand partnerships to the company.

"The changes will support our long-term growth strategy, including our commitments to CSR, and help us to deliver our brand partners and customers’ objectives," said MD Rob Amar. "Justin has shown himself to be a highly capable operator and leader who we look forward to seeing lead our new commercial team.

He added: "I would like to thank Simon for his contribution over the past c.15 years as Board Director. During this time he has played a lead role bringing on and building many of our most successful and valuable brand partnerships, and has made a valuable contribution as Director and colleague across many areas of the business."

RH Amar has also now filled two new sales and marketing positions. Chris Moore joins as Private Label Manager. Chris joins from gategroup – where he was Procurement Manager – and also brings with him 20 years of buying experience from Waitrose. The newly-created role of PR & Communications Manager has also been filled with Meg Ogilvie Smals, previously Consumer PR Manager at Waitrose.

These are in addition to recent hires in Logistics, Finance and the Warehouse team.

All changes are effective immediately.