Meet The Team

Peter Shalson

Chairman

Peter is one of the UK’s most experienced serial entrepreneurs. He is best known for creating Braitrim, the International fashion industry packaging brand, that over a 20 year period supplied most of the world’s leading clothing retailers from manufacturing sites in over 15 countries – which he later sold to Merrill Lynch in 1998.

Full Bio

By 2007 he had founded Brightview, a privately owned Internet Service Provider, entered into the TV shopping arena with Pitch TV, created ETX Capital an industry leading financial trading platform and built Pubfolio Ltd into a UK top 10 public house estate with over 1000 doors. As Chairman of Bordeaux Index he oversaw growth to £100m over an eight-year period. In 2010 he was a founder investor Food Freshness Technology Holdings and recently was appointed as Chairman.

Peter devotes much of his personal time to supporting and raising funds for a number of important children’s charities as well as his generous sponsorship of ‘The London Academy’, acknowledged by Ofsted to be the one of the most successful academies in the UK.

Alasdair MacKay

Chief Executive Officer

Alasdair has spent ten years delivering innovate technologies to extend the quality of fresh before joining It’s Fresh! he worked at AXA UK, latterly as Finance Director of Bluefin Wealth Management, and prior to this was Vice President of Finance at a 600-employee, 10-country, software consulting firm.

Full bio

He holds an MA in Mathematics from Oxford University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Justin Creasy

Technical Sales Director

Justin is an accomplished industry professional, has over 25 years experience in the fresh produce industry supplying all UK retailers, 20 years of which as a Technical Director.

Full bio

Before joining Its Fresh in 2018 Justin worked at Wealmoor and Barfoots of Botley as Technical Director. His professional experience includes everything from direct growing to establishment of supply chains, food quality and packaging, food safety, sales growth, innovation and driving business forward in a sustainable and fair way.

Justin received an Honours Degree in Agriculture at Wye Collage, completed a 2 year Post Graduate training in MDS. He is BASIS and FACTS qualified.

Mark Palmer

Operations Director

Mark is an accomplished Senior Procurement and Operations Professional with over 20 years experience in the manufacturing, print and packaging sectors. Working for, and with many global market sector leading companies Mark is experienced in and passionate about all facets of operational performance.

Full bio

Prior to joining It’s Fresh, he worked for a top 20 global company leading the creation and of a new out sourcing division, managing operational and procurement expertise for some of the worlds most recognised brands.

Mark is MCIPS qualified and is actively involved in training the next generation of supply chain professionals in operational excellence as part of their MCIPS training.

Simon Lee

Founder Director

Simon is a business management graduate with over 30 years experience in the Advertising, Marketing and Packaging sectors. Since 2003 he has been building environmental brands, a cause to which he is committed, providing global retail and supply chain customers with ground-breaking innovative products and solutions.

Full bio

Simon co-founded Food Freshness Technology Holdings (FFTH) an umbrella business to facilitate investment into It’s Fresh! Ltd.

Malcolm C Dodd PhD

South Africa Sales Director

PhD qualified Consultant with thirty nine years’ experience on fresh produce cold and supply chain technologies, and been Its Fresh! sales representative since its introduction in 2016 in South Africa. For six years (2012 – 2018) was honoured as Associate Professor Extraordinaire in the Department of Horticultural Science at the Stellenbosch University.

Full bio

Through this association, contract research was conducted on various post harvest packaging and engineering projects associated with improving the quality of export fresh produce and is well established with South African growers across many fruit types.

Maria Paz Soto

South America Sales Director

Maria Paz is Agronomist Engineer and her professional experience has been focused on international and domestic project management of postharvest technologies, technical Sales, Research & Development and Marketing. Before It’s Fresh she has worked in Maersk Container Industry focused on Control Atmosphere technology.

Full bio

Specialised in Fruit Crops Maria Paz graduated at PUCV in Chile and has a post degree Diploma in Agribusiness Management at PUC. Also she has a Diploma in Fruit Ripening and Ethylene Management, and made a course of Postharvest Technology of Horticultural crops both at University of California Davis, USA.
Maria Paz is based in Chile and speaks English, Spanish and is a Vinyasa yoga practitioner.

Investor Directors

Adam Anders

Managing Partner of Anterra Capital

Adam is the Managing Partner of Anterra Capital, an independent growth capital fund that invests in fast-growing companies, that transforms the way we produce, move and consume food.

Full bio

Anterra was founded in 2013 from a spin-out of Rabobank’s proprietary venture capital fund, Rabo Ventures. The fund is backed by Rabobank, a global leader in food & agriculture financing; and Eight Roads, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International.

Adam has over 15 years private equity and venture capital experience. Earlier in his career Adam worked as a management consultant with Bain & Co. Adam grew up in rural South Australia where his interest in food and agriculture innovation was initiated. Adam holds an MBA degree from Cambridge University, England and a Bachelors Degree in Law and a Bachelors Degree in Commerce from the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Andrew Hinkly

Managing Partner of AP Ventures

Andrew Hinkly is a Founding Partner of AP Ventures which had a first close of US$200 million in June 2018. He has enjoyed a high profile career spanning more than 25 years working in the automotive and mining industries.

Full bio

He held a number of senior leadership positions at Anglo American, where he worked for a decade and was a member of Anglo American Platinum Executive Committee. He previously held senior roles at Ford Motor Company where he was a member of the North American Executive Committee. At Ford he led the Production Procurement operations of Ford Americas and was responsible for $45 billion of annual purchases from over 40,000 suppliers.

Andrew has a MBA from the University of Manchester and a BSc in Civil Engineering from the University of Loughborough.

www.apventuresllp.com

Peter Sugarman

Peter is non-executive Director, as well as a Partner and the Chief Operating Officer of JRJ Group.

Peter is non-executive Director of Food Freshness Technology, as well as a Partner and the Chief Operating Officer of JRJ Group.

Full bio

Peter has had a broad 30+ year career spanning fields of corporate finance, tax, accounting, mergers and acquisitions structuring and commercial banking. Before joining JRJ Group in November 2008, he was employed by Lehman Brothers for more than 7 years, as Head of Principal Investing in the Insurance Advisory Group and as Global Head of the Strategic Transactions Group. Prior to Lehman Brothers, he held various positions at Rabobank and JP Morgan, focussing on structured transactions, primarily within the financial services sector.

Peter holds BA and MA degrees in History and Law from Cambridge University. In addition to Food Freshness Technology, Peter serves as a director for ETX Capital, iProov Limited, and Maddox Capital Limited.

Twitter @PeterSugarman