New chief executive to steer Coral Products to next level
Plastics manufacturer Coral Products is to appoint a chief executive with the executive chairman Joe Grimmond stepping aside into a non-exec role.
The Wythenshawe, Manchester based quoted group will announce profits in early December and pay a dividend of 0.6p per ordinary share, for the year ended 30 April 2023.
Grimmond will step down from his executive chairman position but insists he will still be fully committed to the business where he has performed a remarkable turnaround in fortunes since he joined the board in 2011 and has stepped up as executive chairman on numerous occasions.
He reverts back to being non-executive chairman with effect from 1 January 2024 and Lance Burn will become group chief executive and a director of the company with effect from 2 January 2024.
Burn has worked for the past 14 years within IG Design Group Plc and has been an executive board director since 2012.
Between 2009 and 2019, he was chief executive of UK and Asia and from 2020 ran the IG Design Group International businesses. Most recently living in North America, Lance has acted as Interim Group chief operating officer leading the “critical and accelerated” business and organisational transformation of the loss-making “Americas” division, delivering a FY23 YoY $14.6m adjusted operating profit improvement.
Previously, he successfully run multi-site manufacturing businesses across diverse verticals and has extensive international experience comprising EMEA, India and Asia, specifically China.
However, the company also added a footnote to his appointment release about a coachbuilding business in South Wales that formally went bust in 2010 when Burn was a director.
The statement says: “A special resolution to wind up Tawe Coachbuilders Limited was passed on 4 February 2010 and Tawe Coachbuilders Limited was dissolved pursuant to a creditors voluntary liquidation on 10 March 2016. Lance Burn was a director of Tawe Coachbuilders Limited at the time that liquidators were appointed through to dissolution. The company had a deficit as regards creditors of approximately £1.60 million.”
Grimmond said: “The Company continues to progress well, and we intend to publish our interims for the six months to 31 October 2023 in early December demonstrating earnings in line with market expectations”.
“Lance is well known to the board and brings with him highly relevant commercial and quoted company experience that will benefit the group and its future as it continues to deliver on our stated growth strategy to become a UK plastics business of scale.”
“I am incredibly proud of my time as executive chairman of Coral Products and feel that now is the ideal time to pass the day-to-day leadership on to Lance. I will remain fully committed to Coral Products, as non-executive chairman and supportive shareholder.”
