Sally heads up the Category Strategy function at CCEP, with a focus on turning shopper understanding into action and building category capability. Prior to this she worked across a number of Category & Insights roles within CCEP and before that, JTI. Sally has a passion for understanding shoppers & consumers, finding the human angle to the hard facts. Outside of work she enjoys spending time with her family & 2 dogs, competing in dressage competitions and painting.

An innovation specialist and scientist with a wealth of experience in successful product development across a number of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages categories in Europe and Africa. This is drawn from my work with global corporates and leading brands. I have strong technical expertise in beverage, supported by deep knowledge of consumer insights, strategy and commercial execution. At Britvic, I’m excited to be part of our drive to innovate at scale, grow exciting brands and demonstrate the strategic importance and commercial impact of a courageous and successful R&D Innovation strategy.

Karlijn is Global Brand Development Manager Heineken® 0.0 responsible for Strategy, Innovation & Comms for the leading Global 0.0 beer brand.

Steve Gilsenan has been part of the Guinness Global Brand Team for the past two years, working as Global Head of Quality for Guinness, having previously spent 20 years in Supply. Steve has worked on innovation projects such as MicroDraught and NitroSurge over the past two years, and as a qualified Master Brewer and Beer Sommelier, he had spent the previous five years as Master Brewer of St James’s Gate. Throughout his tenure, he has worked in operations and technical quality across most of Guinness’s key markets, which took him to Trinidad, Ghana and Singapore before returning home to St. James’s Gate in Dublin, Ireland.

- An MBA from ESB Reutlingen, Germany with a focus on Strategic Marketing, Brand & Innovation Management
- A seasoned professional with more than 10 years of work experience in Strategic Marketing, R&D, Market Research, Project Management, Change Management & Innovation Management within the FMCG industry

Mark brings over 20 years experience in the foodservice, retail and FMCG sectors to GlobalData.  Mark joined the GlobalData team in 2017 following 5 years living in Canada where he was an insights leader for PepsiCo and strategy consulting leader for the NPD group.   In his role at GlobalData, Mark brings bold thought-leadership to global partners across the manufacturer, retailer and distributor segments; always striving to find new ways to create growth by positively influencing shopper behaviour.

Mark brings significant FMCG knowledge and expertise to the conference having led research around the world on topics from shopper segmentation, to category market sizing to innovation planning and the study of global best practices.

Mark will be chairing the conference whilst sharing his views on the changing nature of next generation product offerings, the demands and expectations of today’s consumer, and the innovations and trends that will shape the future…

Holly leads DV’s search agenda in identifying the next generation of founder-led spirits brands for potential investment, by staying on the pulse with evolving drinking trends and culture. Before DV she worked in food and drink retail, working on a wide range of insight projects for the UK’s leading grocers and FMCGs. Her experience gives her a great understanding of changing consumer trends and unique founder ideas which meet the lifestyles of today’s consumers.

Serial, multi-award winning entrepreneur and founder of a portfolio of businesses in the FMCG / CPG sector, including marketing and advertising, logistics and fulfilment, print and merchandise production. He has recruited and led high-performing executive teams across several businesses from foundation to multi-million dollar annual revenues and award-winning standing in their respective industries.

In 2019, created and founded now the world's largest, most widely available and most valuable non-alcoholic spirits company, Lyre's Spirit Co. Lyre's products have secured no less than 300 international wine and spirits awards in the first three years of availability and the prestigious non-alcoholic producer of the year in the New York Spirits Competition and a 2021 Spirited Award from the Tales of the Cocktail Foundation.

Mark's background experience is marketing focused and bridges the client / agency divide, bringing a thorough understanding of marketing strategy development and brand commercialisation for the FMCG / CPG industry.

I've spent over 10 years successfully launching 'better for you' and ethical brands within the competitive UK FMCG space. I'm driven by making a positive impact to both people and planet, by giving consumers delicious, sustainable and responsible choices for food and drinks they love

In 2019, Johnny Johnson decided to ditch the booze after getting fed up with the sluggish feeling he got the morning after drinking a few beers. After a couple of weeks of not drinking any alcohol he started to feel great. He was sleeping better, exercising more and his mental and physical health improved. There were no negatives. It was a revelation and one he predicted would take the world by storm. But he missed the taste of his favourite tipple, so set out and explored the world of alcohol-free beers. Not being overly impressed by the options available, he made it his mission to create a new alcohol-free beer, which not only tasted delicious and looked great but was also aligned with his new health goals. 10 months later UNLTD. Beer launched! Low calories, rich in vitamins B6 & B12, low in sugar, vegan friendly and gluten free, UNLTD. truly is 'The Beer with Benefits'.

Julia Kessler is the co founder and CEO of Nix & Kix, a multi-award winning adult soft drinks brand. A hint of cayenne is added to great tasting fruit flavours, for a clean refreshment.

Nix & Kix has built the company from zero to over 1,000 stockists across the UK and international, along with a diverse distribution network spanning retail and foodservice.

Julia’s experience consists of 12 years is in Supply Chain Operations and Program Management in the Hi-Tech industry. She has led numerous business process improvements across multiple regions as well as leading various cross-functional and international teams.

An engineer by training and a cabinet maker in his spare time, craftsmanship lies at the heart of
everything David Begg, founder of The REAL Drinks Co., sets his mind to. Following a career in
international consulting, David sat on the founding team of Active Hotels (now booking.com),
before joining forces with Tom Dixon to found the eponymous design-first furniture, lighting and
interior design brand.

After a move to the Chiltern Hills, David realised that the consumption of alcohol was contrary
to these principles of a simpler, cleaner and more mindful way of life. It was here that The REAL
Drinks Co. began. Applying authentic winemaking techniques to the world’s finest loose-leaf
teas, REAL produces sophisticated, non-alcoholic Sparkling Teas for all occasions, naturally,
nothing added, nothing taken away, just as nature intended.

It’s this uncompromising devotion to flavour that sets The REAL Drink Co. apart from the
crowd. David wants to create a legacy. Through innovation, commitment to quality, and a
dedication to delivering diverse options, The REAL Drinks Co. is becoming the leader in
non-alcoholic fermented drinks, shaping a future where non-alcoholic drinking is celebrated
and respected.

Dominic has 20 years experience leading Account Management and Delivery teams within many leading insight companies including Nielsen, Mintel, Euromonitor and Which?, and has spent time running his own research and data consultancy.

Dominic has also built up an extensive track record of partnering with global FMCG, Foodservice, Retail & Real Estate clients to provide value-added insight, business intelligence and consultancy, with a particular focus on market and opportunity sizing, competitor analysis, product research and consumer insight.

Responsible for assisting the commercial teams with inspirational materials, market insights and refreshed industry trends, Emilio manages the deployment of marketing campaigns and initiatives at a regional level across EMEA. His work closely overlaps with Oterra's global marketing team to effectively address the specific needs of each industry territorially, whilst also maintaining the communication of the company's global marketing and innovation agendas

Having spent 11 of his 20+ years in the food industry leading research, development, and applications for colouring foods and natural colours, Phil Cook is now the Industry Business Manager for Beverage, Dairy and Ice-Cream markets for Oterra, the World’s Largest Natural Colours company. With a combination of technical expertise and market knowledge, Phil matches customers with the best solutions, and identifies new opportunities in the colour space. 

Laura Willoughby is the Director of Club Soda, the Mindful Drinking Movement. Their aim is to create a world where nobody feels out of place not drinking. Club Soda has individuals, drinks brands, and social spaces in its membership.

The inspiration for Club Soda comes Laura’s experience of giving up drinking seven years ago. A campaigner at heart with a background in movement building and politics, she realised that one of the big sticking points was a way to support people to take a self-guided journey to change their drinking.

Club Soda has over 50,000 individual members, have built a venue listing guide for mindful drinkers (clubsodaguide.com) and they run the UK’s only Mindful Drinking Festival which is now in it’s 7th edition. She is author of How to Be a Mindful Drinker, a new book for 2020 published by DK books.

Laura is chair of Imbibe’s No & Low Taste Awards judging panel for 2020

Vicky Berry is the Senior European Business Development Manager at Synergy Flavours, leading business development for the beverage and nutrition markets. Vicky has been at the forefront of Synergy’s innovation pipeline, providing the latest market insights to support future focus areas and developments. Working with colleagues across geographies, Vicky has a key role in the expansion of Synergy’s natural extracts and essences platform which includes the latest product launches; Inspiring Fruits and Hop essences. An important function of the position is collaborating closely with customers, providing market insights and trends to help them stay one step ahead of the competition.

Jill has worked at Synergy for 18 months, having worked in the flavour industry since 2003 after having started her career in confectionary. Jill has worked on both sweet goods and beverages but with a passion for beverage development this is where her expertise has grown over the years both in soft drinks and alcohol beverages.

Brews beer. Like really good beer. Like brewed with relaxing nootropics, but without alcohol kind of good beer.

See boring stuff below: 👇

📺 Featured on Dragons’ Den | 🍺 Founder at IMPOSSIBREW | 🇬🇧 GB Food and Drink Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 | 🇫🇷FWS, French Wine Scholar (Highest Honours) | 🍷WSET Level 3 | ⚗️GC in Brewing - Institute of Brewing & Distilling | 📖 Durham University First Class Philosophy Graduate

www.impossibrew.co.ukBrews

Andrea Launay graduated in 2016 with a MSc in Health Food Innovation Management from Maastricht University.  He then pursued a career as a food & beverage market analyst

and consultant, where he provided data driven insights allowing companies to stay up to date with market dynamics and latest trends and innovations.

Since 2021, he joined Rousselot as a Market Analyst focusing on bringing data & insights to support the global Rousselot Health & Nutrition business.

Olivier Kutz, Category Marketing Manager Tate & Lyle Europe, has a FMCG & Brand Management background through some well-known household names such as PG Tips and Lipton tea, Douwe Egberts coffee and Heinz Ketchup & Foodservice sauces.

As a stevia specialist, Olivier has been working on sugar reduction solutions from an ingredients perspective for quite some time, and has actively taken part in the development of stevia based solutions in Europe. Having spent most of his marketing career in Brand Management and Customer Marketing, over time Olivier built a solid understanding of B2B and consumer markets across the region, translating insights into action and commercial opportunities for his customers.

With a technical background on ingredient functionality, Lin has worked before as beverage scientist and as technical specialist, supporting various Tate & Lyle customers. She’s currently responsible for category growth in the Beverage, Bakery and Confectionary categories working closely with our nutrition, regulatory, commercial, and technical applications teams. Driving growth by translating consumer insights into valuable commercial opportunities is what motivates and inspires Lin at Tate & Lyle.

Marietta Sayegh, MSc, PhD is the Nutrition Business Partner for Europe at Tate & Lyle. In her current role, Marietta supports the EU region by sharing the latest scientific evidence related to various Tate & Lyle ingredient solutions with internal and external audiences and customers. Moreover, Marietta contributes to the development of science-based communication materials targeted at nutrition, health, and wellness audiences.
Marietta holds a PhD in Human Nutrition from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, UK, on inter-individual variation in glucose responses in women. Prior to joining Tate & Lyle, Marietta worked as a postdoc research fellow at the University of Aberdeen, where she led projects focusing on nutrition sustainability and food security within Scotland.

Valérie Vandaele is the Beverage and Confectionery Technical Manager for Europe at Tate & Lyle. Valérie has strong expertise of sweeteners and fibres and, with her team, constantly puts the focus on customers, to better serve them and develop professional solutions for sugar reduction, clean label and healthy products with Tate and Lyle ingredient solutions.

Valerie joined Tate & Lyle 11 years ago and has experience across different technical functions within the food industry in France. Valerie holds a MS in food science and engineering from JUNIA - University of Lille, France.

A Senior Innovation Strategist with deep expertise in disruptive innovation across a wide range of consumer sectors including beverages, consumer health and beauty. As part of the Consumer Disruption team at Cambridge Consultants I help our clients navigate the path from idea to pilot and beyond. Working closely with our technologists, designers and scientists we draw on a broad set of tools across Foresights, Behavioural Sciences, Consumer Insights and Design Thinking. I am excited to be part of the conversation around translating new technologies like AI and biometric sensing into meaningful and desirable use cases for today’s and tomorrow’s consumers.

James works with Toluna clients to democratize research through a seamless blend of proprietary research technology, integrated panel, deep sector expertise across the globe and an agile service model. He builds close relationships to ensure brands maximize their ROI with Toluna and leverage the platform and service model to meet their local and global strategic goals. Prior to joining Toluna, James had over 20 years of experience working in technology businesses to provide companies with the insights and analysis to enable data-driven decision-making, working with finance, supply chain, HR and marketing.

Magda is passionate about innovative digital solutions and developing consumer and shopper insights to effectively drive business decision making. With 15 years’ experience in market research, Magda offers a strong blend of quantitative and qualitative expertise and currently holds a strategic role supporting the growth of the FMCG and Retail business sectors at Toluna/Harris Interactive.

In 2016 Rob Fink founded the world’s first company to focus entirely on brewing Non-Alcoholic craft beer – Big Drop Brewing Co. As a lawyer with zero brewing experience, he teamed-up with an experimental brewer (Johnny Clayton from Wild Beer) and applied left-field fermenting techniques that meant no alcohol needed to be extracted from the end product to meet the required maximum 0.5% ABV. Less than 4 years later he is selling over 1 million bottles of 0.5% ABV beer annually around the world (eg Tesco in the UK, LCBO in Canada, Systembolaget in Sweden, Alco in Finland, NTUC Finest in Singapore etc). His beers have picked up 26 major international beer awards including twice being judged the ‘World’s Best’ at the World Beer Awards, Gold at the US Open Beer Championship and, the ‘Holy Grail’ of any non-alcoholic drink, winning medals against full-strength rivals in blind tastings. In 2019 Rob was a keynote at the Brewers of Europe Forum and the International Beer Strategies conference.

Zoey founded the Fungtional Brew Company with a desire to bring more functional herbs and fungi into the mainstream. Creating more mindful options for conscious consumers looking to reduce their alcohol consumption and empower their health. Zoey has been in the Hospitality industry for over 15 years, across bars, restaurants, events and as a venue and business owner. Her past role as a mindful drinking consultant opened up the world of no and low and this is where she saw the functional gap in the category. An entrepreneur with a passion for health and wellness, her brand Fungtn aims to bring functional drinking into the low alcohol, craft beer space.

Sue, Ingredion Beverage Category Director EMEA, has over 25 years’ experience developing both commercial and marketing strategies in B2B and B2C businesses, globally and locally.  Her experience ranges from commercialising global confectionary platforms at Chupa Chups, managing NPD for cosmetics at The Body Shop, sales for Virgin Vie followed by beverage ingredient strategy management within PureCircle and Ingredion.

Muserref developed stevia market in emerging markets as regional director for 9 years at Purecircle by Ingredion and recently joined TASTE team to develop flavor modifier business in EMEA. Graduated from Food Engineering at Aegen University , Izmir. Muserref has over 20 years experience in food ingredients market.

Joana Maricato is responsible for the consumer and market research at Ingredion, a leading global ingredients solutions company. She is the Global Insights Research Manager at Ingredion’s Insights Center of Excellence, focusing on providing practical and useful insights as well as identifying the best strategies to create consumer-preferred products in today’s increasingly complex business environment.