Foley Wines has named Mike Higgins, its interim CEO since February, to the highest job.
Higgins stepped on this yr following the departure of Mark Turnbull, who resigned as a director on 17 February and left the CEO submit on 30 April.
Turnbull had led the corporate since its 2012 merger with The New Zealand Wine Firm, which was later rebranded as Foley Wines.
Higgins joined the broader Foley New Zealand Group in December as chief govt of Foley Hospitality, overseeing Invoice Foley’s hospitality and lodge pursuits within the nation.
In a inventory change discover as we speak (17 October), chair Paul Brock mentioned: “Mike’s vital business expertise with progress companies in New Zealand will add actual worth to our prospects and our folks. He’ll play a key position in main the continued success of Foley Wines.”
Foley is the corporate’s main shareholder and can be an investor within the US wine sector.
Earlier than becoming a member of Foley, Higgins was chief business officer at Auckland FC, contributing to the membership’s launch in its first season.
From September 2000 till June 2023, Higgins labored practically 23 years at Clemenger Group in Auckland, holding senior finance and operational roles together with CFO and COO.
Throughout that interval, he additionally took on finance management positions throughout a number of associated and different organisations: he was finance director at Touchcast NZ in Wellington from September 2011 to July 2015; CFO at Colenso BBDO in Auckland from April 2013 to June 2015; and managing accomplice of finance at .99 Enterprises (a part of the Clemenger Group) from Could 2012 to March 2013.
Foley Wines manages a portfolio of wineries and types throughout New Zealand wine areas, together with Vavasour, Martinborough Winery and Lighthouse Gin.
Higgins commented: “Foley Wines has a bunch of very devoted and gifted people who find themselves very targeted on producing nice wines that folks like to drink world wide. My continued focus will probably be on enhancing the enterprise’ progress and premiumisation technique to ship worth to our prospects, group members and shareholders.”
For the yr ended 30 June, bottled wine income elevated 6% to NZ$66.3m ($37.9m) and case volumes grew 9% to 610,000.
The corporate’s earnings, nonetheless, weakened: working earnings fell 66.4% to NZ$1.3m, with an after-tax lack of NZ$1.8m, down 54.5%. Working EBITDA declined 21.9% to $12.6m.
Commenting on the leads to August, Higgins mentioned the 2025 monetary yr was “difficult for the corporate and the New Zealand wine trade”.
He added: “While the broader marketplace for packaged wine was down 7% on final yr, our case gross sales have been up 9% in the identical interval, with export case gross sales up 14.6%. This demonstrates our premiumisation technique and the corporate’s continued deal with creating robust routes to marketplace for our manufacturers is delivering outcomes.”
