THE changes being made to Meat and Livestock Australia’s (MLA) international team are “head count neutral, revenue neutral”, MLA managing director Richard Norton says, but should deliver long-term efficiencies.
Mr Norton, with the support of MLA’s board, is proposing to form the current network of seven regional managers into an international business unit containing six international business managers (IBMs) and their teams.
The faces representing MLA internationally will largely be the same, although there will be some changes of location to minimise travel costs and maximise local knowledge.
Absent from the international business unit will be the current Indonesia regional manager, Dr John Ackerman, who has resigned from MLA.
Dr Ackerman will be replaced in Indonesia by a market access technical specialist, and the country will fall under the brief of IBM Andrew Simpson.
The appointment of the new Jakarta specialist indicates MLA is looking for a more interactive approach from its international specialists.
“Since ESCAS (Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System) and the evolution of the LEP (Livestock Export Program) we’ve had two separate streams: meat sales and live export,” Mr Norton said.
“Because ESCAS has evolved now, MLA’s role around ESCAS is gap analysis (the comparison of actual performance with potential or desired performance) and oversight. IBMs and their teams will now work across the whole trade - boxed meat and live export.”
If the restructure is approved, Mr Simpson will relocate from Brisbane to Singapore, from where he will represent cattle producers across South East Asia. Michael Finucan, currently in Seoul, will relocate to Beijing.
“Michael used to be in charge of the live export program in MLA and LiveCorp, so he’s well equipped to handle the operational matters if China starts to import a lot more live cattle,” Mr Norton said.
“We’ve got no-one better inside MLA who knows what has to be done there.”
The go-to people
Mr Norton is modelling the restructure on MLA’s Middle East-North Africa (MENA) office in Dubai, where Jamie Ferguson and now David Beatty have been managing about 20 countries with one team.
“A lot of matters like market access are run domestically, out of the office here in Sydney,” Mr Norton said.
“Marketing is the same scenario. The local team will be working with international business managers to develop strategies for each country.
“The Sydney office will push out information; IBMs are the go-to people in the marketplace.”
While IBMs will geographically remain in their patch, Mr Norton wants to draw on their unique areas of expertise and apply it across all markets.
“Andrew Cox in Japan - he was a very good consumer marketing person, but has had to work on market access issues around the Japan-Australia free trade agreement. He will be using his consumer knowledge across the whole of South East Asia.
“Michael Finucan is very strong in live export, Andrew Simpson comes from a processing background.
“A lot of this strategy gets rid of the key-man risk in market access and possibly live export. We’re disseminating the risk through Australia and in the international markets.”
Mr Norton’s restructure involves:
- An IBM, Michael Finucan, based in Beijing with responsibility for China, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan
- An IBM, Andrew Simpson, based in Singapore with responsibility for Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Burma and India
- An IBM, Andrew Cox, who will remain based in Japan but will have more of a role in working with the other markets, particularly in relation to consumer marketing.
The IBMs located in North America, Brussels and MENA will remain. These roles are currently held by David Pietsch, Michael Crowley and David Beatty respectively.
One of the six IBM roles will also take on responsibility as general manager of the international markets team. In addition to the IBMs reporting to the role, the managers of the Australian based live export program and market access program will also report to the GM IBM. The GM IBM will report directly to the managing director.
Dependent on the outcome of industry consultation around the proposed restructure, an internal recruitment process will be conducted for this role with an announcement likely in early February.