After 35 years, Rick Carlyon believes the time has come for a new person to lead the team at Delmaine. Carlyon will be standing down as the Managing Director of Delmaine Fine Foods Ltd from 14 May when the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Gerry Lynch, will take over.
Lynch comes to Delmaine from a very successful career at Mars New Zealand. The growth achieved under his leadership is outstanding and Carlyon is very confident that he can achieve similar results at Delmaine.
Lynch is from the UK where he obtained first class honours in engineering. He then joined Cadbury where he worked his way up from shift manager to factory production manager. He then moved into marketing at Cadbury and then to Cadbury New Zealand in 2000 in a marketing role. Lynch joined Frucor in 2004 and has been at Mars since 2007, and as General Manager for the last eight and a half years. Over that time he transformed the business into one of the highest performing divisions within Mars globally, as well as finalist for Best Workplace in New Zealand for the last 10 years, winning his category eight times and the overall title twice.
Outside of Mars, he is on the board of the Food & Grocery Council where he set up the Safety Working Group, with the aim of improving safety standards and performance throughout the industry.
Carlyon and partner Thane Smith will not being going away and fully retain ownership of the business and will remain its Directors, however they will not be involved in the day to day running of the business.
