Chiquita Announces Organizational Changes To Facilitate Market Growth Opportunities

CINCINNATI, Oct. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (NYSE: CQB) today announced a number of organizational changes designed to foster further innovation and growth in its key product segments, bananas and value-added salads, as well as leverage cold-chain management as a core global capability.

"The changes announced today are part of our objective to build a high- performance organization, and are designed to help us take advantage of market growth opportunities," said Fernando Aguirre, chairman and chief executive officer. "First, having two proven senior-level executives focusing on our key product segments across all geographies will help us apply best-practices throughout the organization, develop a sustainable pipeline of innovative products for each segment, and develop a growth platform for our key products on a global basis. Second, as our supply chain becomes more complex, it is critical that we focus on creating efficiency and ensuring that cold-chain management remains a core capability. We believe the changes announced today will further strengthen our business in these two critical areas and position us to achieve our goals."

Focusing on Global Product Growth and Execution

The company has named Jeff Filliater and Scott Komar to newly created global product leader positions. Filliater becomes vice president, global strategies for bananas, reporting to Bob Kistinger, president and chief operating officer of Chiquita Fresh, and Komar becomes vice president, global strategies for salads, reporting to Tanios Viviani, president of Fresh Express.

Filliater, who previously served as senior vice president of Chiquita Fresh North America, is responsible for developing Chiquita's banana business worldwide, including establishing the growth platform and innovation pipeline for higher-margin, value-added banana products and applying best practices across geographies. As the global product leader for the salads, Komar, who previously served as vice president of operations at Fresh Express, is responsible for the company's growth strategy in the value-added salads category, including developing a business model by geography to extend the company's salad business to new markets.

Aguirre commented, "We believe providing global product support will enable our organization to better capitalize on growth opportunities and advance our global leadership position in these two key categories. We are confident that Jeff and Scott's experience and leadership will enable them to deliver tangible benefits to our organization in their new roles."

As Filliater moves into his new role, Richard M. Continelli, a veteran with nearly 25 years of experience in the consumer packaged goods arena, has been hired as president of Chiquita Fresh North America, reporting to Kistinger. In this role, Continelli will be responsible for profitability and all operations of the Chiquita Fresh business in the North American market.

"Rick's experience in senior sales and marketing roles for several leading consumer packaged goods companies fits nicely with our objective of becoming a consumer-driven, innovative and high-performance organization," said Aguirre. "His expertise in customer, channel and category management and his outstanding leadership qualities will be assets in helping expand our North American business through new products, channels and customer relationship management. I am confident that Rick will continue the momentum that Jeff and the North American team have generated to help Chiquita Fresh North America reach its goals."

For the last seven years, Continelli worked for Mars, Inc., most recently as vice president of sales for the Masterfoods USA - Snackfood subsidiary in New Jersey. While at Mars, Continelli was responsible for sales, share and profit targets in all channels. He launched a new collaborative planning process that links top customers to Mars' innovation and activity-management process. In addition, he implemented a customer segmentation process to provide differentiated services and created a new customization framework that resulted in increased sales and profitability.

Continelli's experience also includes two years as vice president, field sales for Schering-Plough Healthcare Products and nine years with RJR/Nabisco where he held positions of increasing responsibility ranging from division sales manager to vice president of sales for the Central United States. His responsibilities included the national SuperValu, Fleming and Walgreen businesses. At Nabisco, he had expensive experience in marketing new products, national/regional trade strategies and category management programs. He began his career with Nestle Frozen and Refrigerated Food Co. as a retail sales representative, and advanced to Chicago district sales manager. Continelli graduated cum laude from Boston University with a bachelor of arts degree.

Leveraging Cold-Chain Management

As part of the company's strategic emphasis on excelling in cold-chain management, Waheed Zaman, senior vice president, global supply chain organization and procurement, will focus full time on leading the company's global supply chain. Previously, Zaman had served as CIO in addition to his supply chain responsibilities. Zaman's initial priorities include achieving in-market transportation and logistics efficiencies, creating a comprehensive network capacity plan and supporting co-manufacturing initiatives, focusing first on combining some supply chain activities that are conducted separately today in the North American market, later to expand to other geographies.

As a result of Zaman's focus on the global supply chain, Manjit Singh, who joined the company in April as vice president, corporate information technology, has been promoted to chief information officer. In his new role, Singh will serve on the company's management committee, reporting to Aguirre, and be responsible for all facets of Chiquita's global commercial and innovations systems, infrastructure and applications services, master planning and architecture, web applications and information delivery.

"Having both world-class information technology and superior cold-chain management is critical to our success. As such, we are pleased to have two proven professionals who will be focused on leading us forward in each of these areas," Aguirre said. "Under Manjit's leadership, IT will continue to play a crucial role in facilitating our innovation, growth and cost-saving initiatives. Further, we are pleased to have Waheed's full focus on driving supply chain efficiency and ensuring cold-chain management remains a core competency."

Singh came to Chiquita from Gillette in Singapore where he served as director, Asia Pacific business systems and regional chief information officer for four years. He combined three independent IT organizations into a single unit responsible for all Asia Pacific IT operations. In addition, he developed a regional project management office and drove the creation of a project development and approval process tailored to Asia Pacific needs and which incorporated Six Sigma concepts while also leading the regional SAP, JDE, and Fourth Shift enterprise resource planning teams.

Before joining Gillette, Singh worked in Cincinnati as chief information officer of a company whose operations were acquired by Broadwing, an organization that provided fixed line, wireless, Internet, e-commerce and hosting services across the United States. He joined Broadwing subsidiary ZoomTown, serving as director of strategic alliances, where his responsibilities included directing a venture capital investment fund and handling mergers and acquisitions.

Prior to that, Singh worked for Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, where he served in positions ranging from systems analyst to section manager. Among his accomplishments was the launch of the first official P&G corporate worldwide web site and set up of that company's initial Internet e-commerce and marketing efforts. He earned a bachelor of science in mathematics and computer science at the State University of New York at Binghamton and a master of science in computer science from Indiana University.

About Chiquita Brands International

With annual revenues of more than $4 billion, Chiquita Brands International, Inc. (NYSE: CQB) is a leading international marketer and distributor of high-quality fresh and value-added food products - from energy-rich bananas and other fruits to nutritious blends of convenient green salads. The company's products and services are designed to win the hearts and smiles of the world's consumers by helping them enjoy healthy fresh foods. The company markets its products under the Chiquita(R) and Fresh Express(R) premium brands and other related trademarks. Chiquita employs approximately 25,000 people operating in more than 70 countries worldwide. For more information, please visit our web site at http://www.chiquita.com/.