Tesco to restructure wine buying team and bring in a new MW to help lead

By Erin Smith

Published: 15 April, 2015

Tesco is said to be announcing a number of changes to its wine buying team including bringing back James Davis MW from Greene King and a series of redundancies, according to a report on harpers.co.uk sister publication Off Licence News.

James Davis MW is currently a senior buyer for Greene King and has been with the company for over seven years. His new role at Tesco is said to be reporting directly to the head of Tesco's BWS, Gavin Warburton. Davis previously worked at Tesco as a wine buying manager prior to moving to Greene King in 2007.

Following a head office review, Tesco is expected to announce a number of redundancies to the buying team.

Alain Guillain, UK and group wine category manager, and Lucy Clements, wine product development manager are expected to be leaving the business, said Off Licence News. Clements is moving back to Australia to take up a buying role with supermarket retailer Coles.

Both product development managers Graham Nash and Charlotte Lemoine are expected to stay in their roles.

James Griswood, who in January went to South Africa to work with Origin Wines, is expected to continue his sabbatical there.

The expected announcement follows a series of recent changes to Tesco's wine buying team.

Dan Jago was recently made Tesco's BWS category manager and is now working alongside Gavin Warburton. Laura Jewell MW also left Tesco's BWS team earlier this year for a new role as the UK head of Wine Australia. In November, Nick Hood took a up new role as the BWS quality manager and Catherine Friend was brought on as an assistant wine buyer.

The changes come at time when Tesco's new leadership is under mounting pressure to lower costs in order to retain market share in what has become the UK's fiercely competitive grocery sector.

The company has been at the centre of ongoing investigations by the Grocer Code Adjudicator and the Serious Fraud Office following a misstatement of profits last year of £263 million.

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