Leading 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, Rockliff 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.”
Rockliff 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.
Rockliff added: “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. While concept-to-launch timelines are shortening and the pace of change is accelerating, working alongside a team that understands both manufacturing capability and technical parameters allows you to push boundaries and bring exciting products to market.”
The creation of the group product and innovation director role marks a significant milestone in Finsbury Food Group’s growth journey, reinforcing its commitment to innovation-led development and strategic investment in an evolving bakery market.
Graeme Clark, chief commercial officer at Finsbury Food Group, 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.”
