Comvita Leadership Team: Brett Hewlett, Scott Coulter, Peter Moran, Ralf Schlothauer.
Brett Hewlett
B. Tech (Food), MBA
Chief Executive Officer
Brett has served as Chief Executive Officer of Comvita Limited since September 2005. He is is a current member of the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Better by Design Advisory Board and an Independent Director of the US-based specialty medical device and pharmaceutical company Derma Sciences Inc.
Brett holds significant international business development experience, including roles in emerging and developed markets. He previously served 15 years of a 20-year career internationally with world-leading food packaging company, Tetra Pak. For five years he served as regional Managing Director of Tetra Pak’s eastern Mediterranean markets.
Prior to that Brett worked as Commercial Director for Tetra Pak in Saudi Arabia and has also held other commercial and project management positions in the UK and Europe. He has run his own strategy consulting company and has been an active angel investor supporting start-up companies in New Zealand.
Brett has a Bachelor of Food Technology degree from Massey University and a Masters of Business Administration from IMD in Switzerland.
Scott Coulter
B. Tech (Biotech), BBS (Accounting)
Chief Operating Officer
Drawing on experience in sales and marketing management roles at Dominion Salt and Tetra Pak, Scott joined Comvita as Sales and Marketing Manager in 2002. Now Comvita’s Chief Operating Officer, he leads a global team including line responsibility for all of Comvita offshore entities.
Scott has responsibility for implementing Comvita’s global strategic marketing and sales efforts and supply chain. Scott was personally named as winner of the Export NZ Bay of Plenty Achiever award in 2010.
Peter Moran
BCA (Accounting)
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Financial Officer since 2008, Peter leads the finance and ICT teams and manages the global financial operation, policy and investments.
He has previously worked in senior executive finance roles in high growth and dynamics industries with Caltex, Gen-i, Telecom and Bomac Laboratories and has considerable experience in leading teams through systems development and upgrades and in supporting the wider organisation with operational and financial analysis.
Dr. Ralf Schlothauer
M. Tech, PhD (Bioprocess)
Chief Technology Officer
Ralf joined Comvita in January 2006 as Chief Technology Officer and has overall strategic and functional responsibility for research and development. Ralf leads a team with expertise in research and development and food technology. Comvita’s research team is co-located at the Institute for Innovation and Biotechnology (IIB) at the University of Auckland where Ralf is also an Associate Professor.
Originally from northern Germany where he earned a masters of bioprocess engineering and a PhD in the same field, Ralf has worked in New Zealand for extended periods with Massey University, New Zealand Dairy Research Institute (now part of Fonterra) and most recently at Tatua Nutritionals. In between assignments, Ralf was Group Manager - Probiotics for Danisco in Germany.