At the same time a number of other management changes will take place within the mill and recycling business including the promotion of Dr Jim Malone who will be taking on Mr McGuinness’ responsibilities as chief executive for recycling.
Dr Malone, currently European Sales and Purchasing Director at DS Smith’s recycling division will become “head of recycling at DS Smith” and have similar responsibilities to the managing director/chief executive role held by Mr McGuinness.
The latest personnel changes come as DS Smith strives to cope with the integration and operation of its businesses in the face of rapid expansion on the European continent.
Last week the company announced that it intends to buy Duropack, a recycled corrugated board packaging business “with market-leading positions across South Eastern Europe”, from CP Group 2 BV, a One Equity Partners subsidiary.
Complementary
The acquisition, said DS Smith, is highly complementary to its geographic footprint and “transforms our position in higher-growth South Eastern European geographies, further strengthening our pan-European capabilities to our existing customer base in addition to providing access to new customers.”
Duropack, the company said, has number one or two market positions in many of the geographies in which it operates and, combined with DS Smith’s existing operations in Hungary, Slovakia and Austria, will have a leading position across South Eastern Europe.
The business is well invested with high quality assets and operates a “short paper, long fibre” model similar to that of DS Smith.
The latest management changes at DS Smith come barely six months after the company had announced that Peter McGuinness was also to run the company’s paper division. This was claimed to be part of the business’s strategic direction. DS Smith, in September 2014, said: “As part of our strategic goal to lead the way in recycling, the paper and recycling divisions of DS Smith will be brought under the single leadership of Peter McGuinness, who to date has led the challenge of building a world class recycling division.”
But, now Mr McGuinness’ role as chief executive of the paper division appears to have been only a temporary move. From March 17 this role will be split into two functions. Within the DS Smith Paper Division, Neils Flierman will take the position of Head of Paper Operations, while Michele Bianchi will become Head of Paper Commercial.
Important role
Miles Roberts chief executive of DS Smith said: “Peter McGuinness has overseen a great period of growth for the company, including the consolidation of SCA Packaging. He will continue to play an important role within DS Smith.
Jim Malone will lead the recycling division in the next phase of development, growing the company through a mixture of organic growth and acquisition.”
Jim Malone was European Sales and Purchasing Director, Recycling at DS Smith and has worked at the company for 20 years. Active within the recycling industry he spent the last year as chairman of the CEPI Recycling and Products Committee and is now a member of the new CEPI Raw Materials Committee.
Pan-European
Dr Malone said: “Peter has done a fantastic job building up the recycling division and extending our offering to a wider customer base. I’m looking forward to further
developing the business and expanding our recycling services on a pan-European level.”
And, he added that he plans to continue championing the resource management
industry, particularly as clear political leadership is still lacking to support future
development of the sector.
“Whoever gets elected into the next government must not shirk responsibility to
support policies to help drive recycling forward,” Jim Malone added. “We’ve not had
strong enough guidance from government on the regulations that cover the separate collection of recyclables, in particular specific definition of TEEP for the commercial and industrial sector. It is critical Government can commit the time and effort to support the resource management industry.”
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