Former Young's chief takes helm at Birds Eye

WAYNE Hudson, the former managing director of Young’s Seafood’s frozen business unit, has re-surfaced within the industry – as managing director of Birds Eye.
He takes up his new post in January, replacing Andy Weston-Webb who moves into a new role as chief commercial officer.
Birds Eye is Britain’s largest frozen food company and is heavily into fish, although it also produces a wide range of poultry and vegetables products.
It is perhaps best known – among youngsters at least – for its fish fingers, but has been developing a new range of sophisticated meals over the past couple of years.
Hudson said he was delighted to be joining Birds Eye and was looking forward to his new role, where he planned to continue with the company’s development plans.
The Iglo group, which owns Birds Eye, was bought by Nomad Foods, the new and fast emerging US frozen food business, for just under £2 billion in June this year.
Nomad has also just acquired Findus in Europe and Scandinavia for £500 million and is now one of the biggest – if not the biggest – names in frozen food. Young’s Seafood was not included in the deal.
It was in July that Hudson left Young’s, around the same time as the company was coming to grips with losing the Sainsbury’s salmon processing contract. But the two events were not directly connected as he was responsible for frozen foods.
During his time at Young’s he was behind the company’s re-brand, which included Grimsby coast images as a backdrop.
His departure followed plans to absorb the frozen business unit into a reshaped ‘One Young’s’ structure.
Following this change, Hudson had considered other roles within Young’s, and what was then the wider Findus Group, but made the decision to leave the company and pursue his career elsewhere.