Amin, who joined the McVitie’s owner as CEO in January 2019, is departing Pladis due to personal reasons.
He arrived at Pladis from SC Johnson, before which he spent more than 17 years working for PepsiCo. Amin is also a non-executive director at ITV.
The firm’s chief financial officer Sridhar Ramamurthy and managing director for Europe and developing markets Tim Brett have assumed temporary oversight of operations.
Prior to arriving at Pladis in 2019, Ramamurthy worked for Unilever for 30 years, most recently as executive vice president for enterprise solutions.
Meanwhile, Brett joined pladis in 2022 from The Coca-Cola Company. He has more than 30 years of experience in the food and drink industry.
No timeline for the appointment of a new CEO has yet been announced.
Founded in 2016, Pladis operates 27 bakeries and factories across 11 countries, and owns well-known brands including Jacob’s, GODIVA and Ülker.
The news follows the surprise announcement that Unilever CEO Hein Schumacher had tendered his resignation.
‘Strong combination’
Reacting to the news, food industry analyst and corporate finance director at Rollits, Julian Wild, told Food Manufacture that the new lead tandem of Ramamurthy and Brett represented a strong combination.
“You can only take the announcement of Salman Amin’s departure as being for personal reasons at face value and not necessarily read more into it,” he said.
“The team of Sridhar Ramamurthy and Tim Brett are a strong combination, both having worked for big multinationals in the past. It will be interesting to see what the company does about a new CEO.”
He added that Pladis has achieved “outstandingly good” results in recent times, which is made more impressive given the economic climate.
“What has been particularly impressive has been successful innovation across the Pladis brands, which has refreshed previously mature and relatively uninteresting categories,” Wild continued.
“The group has been willing to take unpopular decisions, such as the Tollcross biscuit factory closure, and looks to be in good shape for the future. It will comfortably ride out this bump in the road.”
