Six directors are leaving Tangerine confectionery in a management shake-up following the arrival of CEO Graham Hunter.

Five months after joining from Northern Foods, Hunter has rung the changes in the senior management team.

“I’ve had time to have a look at the business and decide what is needed to get more profitable growth in the short and medium term,” he said.

One of his priorities is to get the commercial agenda working better. To spearhead that work, he has appointed James Langen as commercial director.

Langen worked with Hunter at Northern Foods, most recently as divisional sales director of the branded side of the business. To make way for Langen, sales director David Liburn has left and marketing director Alison Brand will be leaving in July.

Another executive director to have left is group procurement director David Mitchell, who will be replaced by his lieutenant Penny Gray.

“We already had a very good group procurement manager in Penny,” said Hunter, who has also disbanded the three-strong non-executive director team of Richard Brittle, Robert Whitfield and Chris Marshall. Marshall had only recently joined as a non-exec having made way for Hunter as CEO at the start of the year.

The former directors will continue to provide consultancy services. Their departures were “extremely amicable”, said Hunter, adding that he had elected to run a purely operational executive board.

A separate group board has also been established involving private equity owners Blackstone, who bought the confectionery supplier a year ago.

Under previous owners Growth Capital Markets, Tangerine quadrupled in size through a series of acquisitions, including Burton’s Confectionery in 2006 and Monkhill Confectionery in 2008.

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