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…

With over twenty five years of international marketing leadership experience, Sophia started her career in the hotel industry working for the Intercontinental and then Sheraton hotel groups, in PR and Corporate Sales functions respectively. She worked in Athens and London and, prior to Brown-Forman, spent eight years in marketing roles in the Luxury Product Division of L’Oreal working on Lancome, Armani Fragrances and Biotherm brands, among others. At Brown-Forman, she has worked in a variety of local, regional and global marketing roles, both operational and services, starting the work that led to the company’s digital transformation. Her current role is Managing Director, Jack Daniel’s Brands, leading a global team responsible for the long-term sustainable growth of the brand. During this time, she successfully repositioned the brand, launched Jack Daniel’s first truly global campaign - Make it Count - and delivered double digit growth.

A results-oriented brand expert, with over 20 years’ experience across global brands, Jayne has an exceptional record of achievement in the development and implementation of business and brand strategies that have driven significant growth in sales, profitability, market share, and brand awareness. Since starting her career at Unilever, Jayne has held director level roles at several globally renowned companies including Mars, Diageo and Marks & Spencer. In 2019, Jayne joined Lyre’s Non-Alcoholic Spirits, a fledgling Australian start-up, with an ambition to change the way the world drinks. As Vice President of Marketing, Jayne is responsible for developing and executing the business strategy and marketing plans across Europe and sits on the Global Executive team. Within 3 years Lyre’s has become the largest independent non-alcoholic drinks brand in the world. Lyre’s currently sells in over 60 countries across multiple channels, with an international workforce of 120 people.

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.

As a seasoned marketing professional, Simona Bianco has spent the last 20 years working for major global Companies like Accenture, Chrysler, Heinz-Kraft, Barilla and ILLVA Saronno. Thanks to her natural intuitive, creative nature and deep consumers’ understanding sensitivity, she has been responsible for the growth of established Brands as well as several successful new product launches. She now directs advocacy programs and lead generation strategies for the whole ILLVA Spirits Portfolio, overseeing the Brand’s consumers’ and on-trade activations. She deals with the key influencing people of the spirits industry and develops strategic partnerships that brought the main Brand Disaronno to enter the Top 10 Trending Brands in the Drinks International ranking for two consecutive years.

Dan Szor is a native New Yorker who, after working in finance the US and Europe, settled in the Cotswolds with this family. After falling in love with both whisky and the Cotswolds he combined both passions to create the first distillery to make whisky in the region. Eight years on the Cotswolds Distillery is leading the emerging English whisky category and has gone onto to win numerous global awards for its whisky and gin produced at its beautiful brand home in the North Cotswolds. Dan is a founder and active member of the newly formed English Whisky Guild and sits on the executive board of the WSTA.

Founder and owner of Teerenpeli Group (Lahti, Finland) a family company with wife Marianne and two already grown up children. After university studies in hospitality business opened his first Teerenpeli restaurant in 1994. The group has now 10 restaurants among brewery and distillery. Board member in banking and small brewers association. Passion for sustainable Nordic whisky region and always looking for a possibility to make better business.

Simon joined Penderyn in June 2020 with a remit on international brand development covering existing business, new markets and channels.

Simon has a wealth of experience in the drinks industry featuring over 22 years at Guinness Brewing / Diageo plc, followed by a period managing EMEA & India for Remy-Cointreau’s global travel retail division and prior to joining Penderyn, played a key role in Halewood international as MD of a new travel retail business and building Whitley Neill Gin into #4 premium gin in the channel globally by the end of 2019.

Starting out in logistics & supply chain functions within Guinness, Simon moved into commercial roles in late 90s and since 2002 has been working almost exclusively in international and duty-free markets.

Alex Højrup Munch is co-founder / CMO and one of the four engineers in the group of nine friends that started the Distillery in an abatoir in 2005. He is 47 years old. His daily function at the Distillery is sales, marketing and product development. His favourite whisky are whiskies that are unpredictable, surprises and makes you come back.

As Head of Marketing & Communications at Double Dutch, Anna leads the cross-channel marketing plans for Double Dutch in the UK and supports the brand globally across export markets. Anna has worked in the drinks industry for the last 10 years, across the Atom Group (Master of Malt, Atom Brands & Maverick Drinks) as well as the IWSC and its portfolio of whisky events.

Having spent the previous 4 years at Brewdog managing one half of their UK Grocery division and prior to that in various buying roles at both Iceland and ASDA, I joined Double Dutch 6 months ago as Head of Retail. Leading and implementing the strategy across; UK Grocery, Ecommerce, UK Convenience/Wholesale and Premium Retail.

Born in France of Irish parents, Paul joined the Alcohol Industry in 1996 as a Commercial Manager for Jameson Whiskey, part of Pernod Ricard, where he held various senior commercial roles. Paul subsequently moved to the UK to become International Commercial Director for the Scotch & Gin brands portfolio, working extensively across Europe, the Americas and Asia.

In 2014, Paul became Managing Director of Pernod Ricard South Africa looking after the Spirits and Wines portfolio for Southern Africa until he left the company in late 2019. Following a successful 20 year career at in the Drinks Industry, Paul  set up his own Beverage Consultancy and since then has worked with both Start Ups as well some leading premium Gin, Vodka, Rum, Hard Seltzer and Alcohol-Free spirit brands.

Combining his passion for impeccable quality, the No/Low beverage category and South Africa, he partnered with Danielle Schoeman to launch the Mahala Botanical brand in 2021. Paul is an avid rugby fan, cyclist and a strong believer in healthy and mindful living. Paul resides in London but travels extensively to Cape Town to work with Danielle and her team.

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

As a previous drinks industry executive, Craig developed the strategy, built the structure, & implemented the RTM & brand plans for Pernod Ricard's charge into Africa. Before that he was Strategy Director for Absolut, Malibu and Kahlua, driving the strategic plan & brand development strategy.

Since leaving the drinks world in 2015 he has been involved in business process outsourcing to Africa, setting up a values-based, people management web-platform, and consulting. He also presents on futurology; how our lives are going to change dramatically over the coming decades.

Early 2017, Craig (South African) and his wife Maria (Swedish) discovered a magical valley, home to many intriguing botanicals, in the Cederberg mountains, just north of Cape Town. The valley, which they now co-own, inspired them to distil rare Cape & classic gin botanicals, and then blend with pristine Swedish water. The result is CEDER'S, a distilled non-alcoholic alt-gin, your Everyday Escape.

Craig also launched CELTIC SOUL in July 2019, a distilled non-alcoholic dark spirit, and has a few more brands in the pipeline, including a non-alcoholic rum and a CBD Botanical Spirit. Watch this space.

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.

Yossi Meshulam is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ripples. He has been in Tech for over 25 years in various executive positions driving innovations and taking them to market. Ripples invented Bev-Top Media allowing printing digital content on foam top beverages, boosting organic social media exposure and sales.

Prior to Ripples, Yossi was VP of Sales and Market Development at HP’s video conferencing division and held various executive positions at Mercury. Meshulam holds an MBA with High Honor from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in economics and computer science from Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

Lea Lorenzi is a beverage applications technician and trainee flavourist at Synergy Flavours Italy. Lea's role involves using the company’s longstanding expertise in natural extraction technologies to develop premium beverage products across alcohol and soft drinks.

Lea’s close collaboration with customers and expertise in the beverage market means that demands for innovative beverage product development can be met with a premium range of tailor-made natural extracts and essences.

Having worked for nearly 30 years in the International packaging industry, Elaine has experience in working with many of the World’s leading food and beverage companies assisting them to innovate, recreate and renovate their packaging.   With extensive knowledge across multiple packaging formats, including printed folded cartons, flexible packaging, closures and glass, Elaine understands the challenges faced in an ever changing and challenging marketplace.

In her role as UK Country Group Leader for NPD & NPD for O-I, the team focus is on delivering premium and sustainable glass solutions to the spirits and beer industries.  O-I’s consultative approach in dealing with new projects, major redesigns or brand refreshes is valued by both existing and new customers.

In February 2015, Ilham Chahboune joined SICPA SA as Sales and Marketing Manager,
responsible for Product and Brand Protection marketing materials and product management and
since then Ilham become Business Development Director, in this role, she is responsible of
developing and growing business in W&S, Luxury, and Cosmetics segment by introducing SICPA
technologies from materials to digitals.

Prior to SICPA, Ilham worked at Philip Morris International, Nestle, and SC Johnson.

Ilham holds an International Business degree from Iona College and NYU, New York, USA.

Tom Vink, CEO of TOP COMPANIES (Rotterdam Harbour Area- The Netherlands) has over 25 years of experience in all facets of the international world of transport and storage of drinks and other special goods. With an exceptionally wide network; an enormous passion for the world of drinks and the associated logistical needs and challenges, and Tom's innovative view of processes and solutions, TOP COMPANIES has developed a modern logistics partner that can act in a targeted, efficient and flexible way for its clients and work closely together; with authorities, current legislation and the most modern techniques. The worldwide network of warehousing and transportation companies allows TOP to offer integrated worldwide logistics solutions, meeting your requirements at multiple locations with multiple transport modes. When doing business with TOP Companies, You will experience leading innovative tailor-made solutions, based on secured information technology. Working closely together on basis of personal relationships, TOP will find the logistics solutions that boost your business. TOP developed into a major player based in the Rotterdam harbour area, with an outstanding reputation of reliability and flexibility. Therefore they proudly say: TOP COMPANIES. HOME OF LOGISTICS

Passionate about shaping and delivering the R&D+i strategy to help Cork Supply succeed in long-term growth. Interested in prioritizing innovative ideas and embracing cross-functional challenges for go-to-market success. An expert in cork and bottle-wine-cork interactions, including aspects concerning food safety - European Regulation and FDA premises. A member of the Sustainability Committee at Cork Supply, particularly involved in assuring that sustainability goes beyond the environmental perception, for both the company and products. Ana Cristina is also a co-author in five patent families, has written numerous scientific publications in peer reviewed magazines and is active in technical committees such as ISO and CETIE.

Elena Troyanska, CTO of Proexes (Bulgaria) is a solution-oriented technical professional with focus on the cloud. Elena has experience with business process modeling, enterprise architecture, and associated platforms/tools. She contributes to operating and business model analysis, synergizing with other business entities and assists in the technology enablement of core capabilities and value stream.

Velichko Sarev, CEO of Proexes (Bulgaria, Sofia) has over 20 years professional experience in the large enterprises providing professional services for international companies around the world. Velichko brings unique perspectives gained from his battlefield experience in the Food & Beverage industry, has a track record of successful transformation initiatives in Commerce, Supply Chain, Finance and Legal areas where standing next to the customers as business technologists and advisors as well.

Professional of international F&B sales development in Lavazza and Nestlè for many years, today enthusiastically converted to the challenging business of packaging and closures at Multinational Boutique named Tapì Group. Continuous innovation for fun, destination and mission is all around Tapì Group and inspires me as a Manager as well as a Man. “There is no favourable wind for who does not know where to go” (Seneca)