Hain Celestial has named Alison Lewis as the US food group’s permanent president and CEO, seven months after she stepped in on an interim basis.
Lewis, a former Kimberly-Clark and Coca-Cola executive who has been on Hain’s board since September last year, took up the roles in May as a temporary assignment to replace Wendy Davidson.
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
She had already sought to make her mark on the better-for-you food and drink business when she announced in November plans to cut around 30% of the company’s SKUs in North America, Hain’s largest market.
“We remain committed to building a winning, simpler portfolio by exiting unprofitable or low-margin tail SKUs, refocusing resources on brands and categories with the highest growth and margin potential,” Lewis said at the time.
Commenting on her appointment today (15 December), Lewis said: “I am honoured to lead Hain Celestial and look forward to delivering our strategy to reposition the company for a stronger future.
“Over the last several months, the company has been intensely focused on our initiatives to stabilise sales, improve profitability, optimise cash, and deleverage our balance sheet.”
Lewis will continue to serve on the board. Her career history also includes an executive at Johnson & Johnson and Kraft Foods.
Hain had employed the services of Goldman Sachs to assist with the portfolio review for a company that operates across snacks, meal preparation, baby foods, beverages and personal-care products.
Specific brands or categories that might be up for disposal were not named or identified in November when the portfolio trimming was quantified.
“Looking ahead, we are targeting the elimination of approximately 30% of our SKUs in North America through fiscal 2027, representing low value in our portfolio and enabling us to improve supply chain efficiency and shelf productivity,” Lewis said last month.
“We have implemented a disciplined portfolio management review process designed to continuously assess, add, or retire SKUs, maintaining an optimised winning portfolio, and eliminating reliance on large episodic rationalisation efforts.”
Board chair Dawn Zier said today: “The board has had the opportunity over the past few months to observe Alison in action. We are pleased with the bold moves she has already taken to reduce costs, the turnaround agenda she has put in place designed to drive margins and growth, and her focus on progressing the strategic review with Goldman Sachs.”
Davidson departed the company in May after only joining the group in 2023. During her tenure, she disposed of the snacks brands ParmCrisps and Thinsters but had ruled out the divestment of personal care.
The departed CEO had also pledged to remove “lower margin” SKUs under her Hain Reimagine transformation initiative, continuing with a programme under previous CEO Mark Schiller.
The Linda McCartney’s plant-based meats and Celestial Seasonings tea owner reported an annual loss of $531m in September, linked to a pre-tax non-cash impairment charge of $496m.
Then Hain also reported a net loss for the first quarter of the new fiscal year to 30 September of $21m versus a $20m loss in the corresponding period.
The adjusted net loss was $7m, compared to a loss of $4 million. Adjusted EBITDA was positive at $20m versus $22m.
Sales, meanwhile, dropped 7% to $368m and organic sales were down 6%. Hain attributed the decline to a seven percentage-point decrease in volume/mix with a one-point gain from pricing.
Losses per diluted share were $0.23 compared to a loss of $0.22.
