Finsbury Food Group has appointed Neil Rockliff as group product & innovation director.
Rockliff, who joined the business in January, has 30 years’ industry experience. Most recently, he was innovation director for the meals category at Samworth Brothers.
Prior to joining Samworth Brothers, Rockliff spent 17 years at Greencore, culminating as head of insight & innovation.
In the newly created role, Rockliff will report into Finsbury Food Group CCO Graeme Clark and will work closely with group category & insight director, Ben Kisby, to analyse data and create products based on consumers’ needs.
Finsbury Food Group created the role to signal its intent to invest further in its innovation capability, enhance strategic alignment with customers and ensure product development played a central role in its future direction, it said.
Clark said: “A core focus of Neil’s role will be to ensure Finsbury’s innovation approach is both proactive and strategically aligned.
“By strengthening the connection between insight, category strategy and development, Finsbury’s new product propositions will be grounded in robust consumer understanding while delivering commercial impact.”
Rockcliff said: “When innovation is grounded in insight, commercially viable and compelling enough for consumers to repeat purchase, you’ve hit the sweet spot.
“Achieving this means investing more time at the front end to answer the ‘so what’ behind every new product.”
It comes after Finsbury Food Group last month claimed a UK supermarket “first”, launching a bento cake into Tesco.
Little Big Cake: Paint the Town Red Velvet (rsp: £14/740g) features one serves-eight red velvet cake, layered with raspberry jam, and topped with cream cheese frosting and funfetti sprinkles.
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