Daniel Lutz, the CEO of Swiss food and beverage group Orior, is stepping down after nearly a decade in charge.
The board of directors, together with Lutz, “has reached an agreement that the company’s leadership should be placed in new hands”, the Zurich-headquartered group said in a statement.
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Orior named Lutz, a former Nestle executive, as its CEO in October 2014.
In August, the company tweaked its sales and margin guidance lower amid what Lutz said at the time remained a “challenging environment”.
Orior experienced a nearly 24% fall in EBIT in the first half of the year to SFr12.8m ($14.6m), with the EBIT margin dropping 130 basis points to 4.1%.
Net profit during the period was down 27% at SFr9.4m.
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By GlobalDataOrior said today (7 November) it has started the recruitment process for a new CEO.
In a statement, the board expressed gratitude to Lutz for his tenure, specifically for “the successful internationalisation of the Orior group and handling of the extraordinary situation during the Covid crisis”.
In the interim, Filip De Spiegeleire, a member of Orior’s group executive board since 2016, will assume the role of CEO.
When Orior published its first-half results in August, the company said former Emmi finance chief Sacha D Gerber would become its CFO from 1 January. It said today Gerber would take up the role “earlier than planned” on 11 November.
Current CFO Andreas Lindner, who Orior had previously announced was leaving the business, will support the financial team until the end of January.
Meanwhile, due to these leadership changes, Orior has postponed its investor day, originally scheduled for early December.
In the 2023 financial year, Orior reported net sales of SFr643.1m, a growth of 1% from SFr636.7m in 2022.
EBIT decreased by 15.3% to SFr32.1m from SFr37.9m in the previous year.
Net profit attributable to the parent company’s owners declined by 17.8% to SFr24.8m from SFr30.2m in 2022.
