Bottle Green poaches national account manager from Australian Vintage

By Gemma McKenna

Published: 06 May, 2014

Wine importer and distributor Bottle Green as appointed Russell Smith to senior national account manager, with responsibility for two national off-trade customers.

Wine importer and distributor Bottle Green has appointed Russell Smith to senior national account manager, with responsibility for two national off-trade customers.

Smith joins from Australian Vintage, where he was responsible for the Tesco account. He worked there for just over one year. Before that Smith was sales manager at PLB for eight years, looking after the Asda and Morrisons accounts. Prior to that Smith worked as a wine buyer at Asda.

Jon Eagle, managing director at Bottle Green, said: "We are delighted that Russell Smith is joining Bottle Green. His depth of experience in the wine industry will be a great asset to the company and will further enhance our offering as a first choice partner for retailers."

Bottle Green has been focused on a "major producer acquisition" in the last two years in order to make its portfolio as comprehensive as possible. "We're not a collector of names - we like to be exclusive. We don't like to have five Loire producers, but one partner. In the last six to 12 months we've brought on significant new suppliers," sales and marketing director Richard Hitchcock told harpers.co.uk in March.

The company has boosted its French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish offerings, and aside from its main off-trade business, the on-trade and independents' division Bottle Green Wines, is growing fast, now accounting for one third of the business inside just two years.

"To be relevant you have to have breadth of supply, distribution and customer base. Agents and importers who can only offer entry level or own label or one country - this market will be very tough for them," Hitchcock said at the time.

Bottle Green has been owned by DCC, the Irish based sales, marketing and support services group, for the past 10 years. The Irish group's most recent turnover figure was €13 billion.

Bottle Green has 23 staff and is based in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

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