Speciality bakery manufacturer, Finsbury Food Group, has strengthened its commercial leadership team with the creation of a new senior role, appointing Neil Rockliff as Group Product and Innovation Director.
This signals clear intent from Finsbury to invest further in its innovation capability, enhance strategic alignment with customers and ensure product development plays a central role in shaping the Group’s future direction.
Neil brings extensive experience of leading innovation strategies across complex, multi-site, muti-category food businesses having held roles at Samworth Brothers and Greencore. This closely mirrors Finsbury’s UK and European footprint and diverse product portfolio spanning retail, foodservice and export channels.
The role has been established to not only build a stronger innovation pipeline, but to help shape future investment decisions across the Group by providing a clearer mechanism for Finsbury to identify emerging growth areas.
By aligning innovation strategy with investment planning, Finsbury aims to ensure that its manufacturing capabilities evolve in line with future category growth, not simply current demand, building a long-term competitive advantage.
Speaking about his appointment, Neil said: “When I met with the leadership team, it was immediately clear there is real ambition within Finsbury, ambition for quality and ambition for growth. The diversity of Finsbury’s product and customer mix creates huge opportunities from an innovation perspective. There’s real scope to evolve categories and unlock new areas of growth.”
Neil will report into Graeme Clark, Chief Commercial Officer, and will work closely with Ben Kisby, Group Category and Insight Director, to analyse and leverage data and insights to build propositions with consumer wants and needs at its heart.
