Dan Oakley

Dan has lived and breathed food and drink throughout his career. With 15 years Board Level experience, including 5 years as Managing Director, UK & Ireland, for Puratos (a £1bn+ multinational food ingredients company) Dan has excelled at motivating his teams to deliver results. During his time at Puratos Dan led the team to year-on-year profitable growth in an extremely challenging market segment. Throughout this period the development of his team and organisation of people was one of the key pillars of the strategy to deliver exceptional results.

During 2005 – 2008, Dan was UK Sales Director of Puratos, leading a team across a number of sales channels. He has also worked as Global Retail Director and was responsible for the development of an international team and strategy, to double sales over 5 years.

Dan also headed up the Business Unit responsible for Tesco during his time at Greencore Plc, between 2001 – 2004. Greencore Plc are the UK leading own-label food manufacturer across a number of food categories.

Dan started his career with Cargill, the world’s largest privately owned company, as a Graduate trainee. Within one year he had become UK Sales Manager and was responsible for ensuring the merger of two sales teams as part of a strategic acquisition. During this time Dan spent three years living and working in Belgium.

Dan has benefitted from studying at one of the World’s leading Business Schools, INSEAD University in Fontainebleau, Paris. He has a Master’s Degree in Consumer Psychology, a Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce from Birmingham University and is accredited in the Insights Personality Profiling.

Dan has spent the last 8 years running a successful Management Consultancy focusing on Organisational Design and People Development.  The business operates internationally with Dan spending the majority of the last few years in the US, Asia and South America.

Dan also heads up the team at Product Chain, a successful FMCG sales agency known for championing innovative food and drink brands ensuring they get a place on supermarket shelves, wholesaler catalogues and a seat at the bar in the on-trade sector.