A WARM WELCOME TO OUR NEW CEO

Stuart has acted in the capacity of MD, CEO and non-executive director in the perishable FMCG sector over the last twenty years.
More specifically, he has led organizations in the public and private sectors, both in South Africa and Europe that were involved in very complex, fresh fruit export value chains.

In the private sector, Stuart has helped turn around multi-billion rand companies relatively quickly. This was achieved by looking at every facet of the businesses to see where things could be done more effectively from a strategic point of view, and more efficiently from a cost point of view.
In the public sector, Stuart’s key achievements were to introduce significant culture shift and innovation technology solutions (which included the implementation of inspection tablets for 700 employees nationally). In doing so, he enabled the organization to become more customer-centric, and a relevant, value-adding organization of the future.

Stuart focuses on empowering his staff at every available opportunity, and enjoys implementing new business models that require creative thinking, and more importantly, tough decisions. More specifically, he tends to focus his attention on three things: (i) getting results by motivating employees to deliver their very best efforts; (ii) basing decisions on accurate and real-time data to ensure the most favourable of outcomes; and (iii) constantly aligning the organization to the fast-changing trends in the industry.

Stuart has accumulated a skillset that best describes him now as an entrepreneurial change agent. In addition to the agricultural sector, he has experience in the sales of training products, the manufacturing of packaging, and the development of information technology software. And of course, no product makes its way successfully to market unless a company has an intimate knowledge of its value chain – an area of the business that today makes or breaks a company’s competitiveness.

Finding innovative solutions to tough challenges underpins everything Stuart gets involved with. His skills make him ideally suited to the current challenges facing South Africa, where strategic insight, diplomacy, and the ability to execute successfully will be invaluable at Casidra.