FDBusiness.com

Arla Foods UK, the country’s leading dairy co-operative, has appointed Steve Millard as its new Head of E-commerce & Digital. The newly created role forms part of Arla’s wider ambitions to increase the proportion of its online sales in the UK to 20% by 2025, as more shoppers than ever turn to digital retailers to purchase their household groceries.

Steve Millard will lead the digital offer of Arla’s sales and marketing teams, engaging with major online retail outlets to increase the presence of its dairy products. This will include online-only retailers, as well as traditional high-street outlets and supermarkets.

The new post will also play a key role in meeting Arla’s target to spend 25% of its marketing across a range of online retail and social channels by the end of the decade.

This forms part of Arla’s Strategy 2020 corporate vision, which aims to add value to its farmer owners’ milk through increasing sales of branded products such as Lurpak, Castello and the Arla brand and by changing the way it does business.

Steve Millard joins Arla from Jacobs Douwe Egberts, having previously worked at Burtons Biscuit Company, Tesco.com and Dunnhumby.

Steve Millard, Head of E-commerce & Digital at Arla Foods UK, comments: “The creation of a new digital and e-commerce team shows that Arla has a firm grasp of the challenges facing the dairy retail sector and I am excited to take on the role. Online frequency of purchase and shorter shelf life of dairy products have historically influenced a slower uptake in dairy’s shift to e-commerce compared with other food and drink products.”

He adds: “As consumers turn to an increasingly sophisticated online market place, it is important that companies continue to prepare for an ever-changing – and often unpredictable – new way of doing business. I’ll be doing this for Arla by increasing the visibility of its products online, integrating and driving digital understanding and ways of working within the organisation.”