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Australian specialist consultancy Pollen Consulting Group has opened a new office in the UK to help the country’s FMCG sector get back on track.

Since launching in 2016, Pollen has grown in strength to become an established player in the Australian consulting industry with sales of $ 5 billion. The consulting company has set itself the goal of raising the bar in the FMCG sector and working with customers on transforming the value chain and improving performance.

Now that the company is looking to build on its first five years of success, Pollen has announced that it will be opening a new wing in the UK. The news is kind of a homecoming for founder and CEO Paul Eastwood, who moved to Australia from the UK nine years ago and became a director of his former employer Coriolis in the company’s Sydney office.

According to him, the UK consulting market is stagnating and saturated with niche providers, which Pollen believes is necessary to change at a crucial time for the country’s economy.

Eastwood told the press about the timing of Pollen’s expansion into the UK: “We have been working on our global growth strategy for the past 12 months. During that time, the world has changed and it’s time that counseling changed too. The UK has had a tough time and we want to help get things back to normal. “

Pollen strives to improve the performance of its customers by creating value through an end-to-end transformation of the supply chain. The company has a wealth of experience and a team of experts in FMCG, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and industrial, retail and trade, sales and logistics, and fast service retail – and the UK retail segment is currently on the verge of faltering under the pressure of the Brexit pandemic advised and in a deep recession there is likely to be a strong demand for these skills.

Pollen has already started to recruit a strong management team with the appointment of Derek Cunningham as managing director and Sophia Pizzey as growth and engagement manager. The pair is kicking off immediately, with additional team members being announced in the next quarter.

Her first goal will be to attract top talent as Pollen wants to grow and meet demand in its new market – after an initial FMCG project has already landed in the UK.

Cunningham has 15 years of UK business consultancy experience and is known to address complex issues in the supply chain. As a former project manager at Libra Europe Consulting, he spent the last 12 years at Acumen, where he delivered a variety of projects in various industries and was most recently a director.

Commenting on his new challenge, Eastwood said, “Our customers work with us to provide additional power, industry knowledge, expertise and intellect when it is needed to solve their biggest problem: whether they need to evolve to support growth, they have possibly an opportunity but to be held back by ongoing operations or even a challenge to find and review and streamline a business to adapt. “

Pizzey is now joining Pollen UK after moving from the company’s headquarters in Sydney. She brings her experience to the close cooperation with the ANZ team. For the last 12 years of her career, Pizzey worked in sales, marketing and PR before moving to Pollen from the UK to join Pollen in 2018 as the company’s growth and engagement manager.

Commenting on Pollen’s UK launch, Pizzey said, “I can’t wait to replicate in the UK the culture, values ​​and skills that we at ANZ are so well known for. Pollens are a different type of counselor; You speak honestly and directly and work as an extension of our team. I have no idea how they attract such highly talented people. They are independent, efficient and get things moving – most of all, they love to solve problems and have fun doing it! “