New CEO for Chr Hansen North America
North America, following the resignation of Donald Combs earlier
this month.
Coombs resigned from the position on 4 January.
Carpenter has held various positions with the ingredients company since he joined in 1999, namely as head of sales for the dairy business and the bio ingredients business, before recently working as senior vice president of sales and marketing for North America.
"Chr Hansen in North America will be focused on becoming more globally integrated, and building on the expertise, experience and systems of affiliates throughout the world, meaning customers will benefit from faster and more cost effective solutions," said Carpenter.
The company has subsequently promoted Don Cox to senior vice president of sales and marketing for the US, Canada and Mexico.
The company said in a statement that the company had reached a number of milestones in recent years, including several product launches such as that of SafePro meat cultures that help fight listeria, ColorFruit natural red colors and Yo-Fast dairy cultures.
The next 12 months should prove interesting for the company as it announced in November 2004 that it was up for sale; its major stakeholder deciding to pull away from the ingredients slice of the company to focus on the pharmaceutical unit.
The move evolved out of discussions over the past three years to separate the Danish group into two independent listed companies, an ingredient and an allergy vaccine company.
But the primary shareholder in Chr Hansen, the Lundbeck Foundation that has its roots in the pharmaceutical business, has since informed the group's board that it does not wish to be a long-term strategic shareholder in the ingredients company.
The board of directors at Chr Hansen said they had therefore "entered into an agreement with the investment banker Carnegie Bank to investigate the possibilities for a divestment of the ingredients sector".
The ingredients operations of Chr Hansen include cultures, enzymes, colours - where it is the number one natural colour supplier - flavors, seasonings and sweeteners. Industry players with the means to acquire Chr Hansen could meet with competition concerns, provoking observers to suspect the group will be broken up into units.
But the CEO of Chr Hansen, Erik Soerensen told FoodNavigator.com that this is not the case: "The ingredients business will not be split up, it is all or nothing."
