In the past 18 months, the two biggest names in Australian grocery have rebuilt their leadership structures. The pattern in both is the same. Functions that used to sit in separate silos, each with its own executive, are being pulled together under single leaders with much wider remits. For anyone hiring senior FMCG talent, that shift matters more than the individual appointments.

What Coles Actually Changed



In May 2025, Coles merged its in-store retail, Coles 360 retail media, digital and customer functions under one leader. Michael Courtney, who had been running Coles Liquor, was appointed Chief Customer and Digital Officer, bringing ecommerce, digital products, loyalty, marketing and customer insights together in a single role. The standalone Chief Digital Officer position was absorbed.

The restructure also moved people out. Chief Customer Officer Amanda McVay departed as part of the change. And Claire Lauber was appointed Chief Executive of Coles Liquor, stepping up from her previous role as Executive General Manager of Supermarket Operations, where she had overseen 850 supermarkets and led nearly 100,000 team members.

So in one move, Coles combined four functions under one executive, removed a C-suite role, and promoted an operator with deep supermarket experience into a P&L leadership seat. That tells you what the business now values at the top.

Woolworths Made the Same Call

Woolworths has moved the same way. In February 2025, Annette Karantoni was appointed Managing Director, Woolworths Retail, a division that brings together Woolworths Supermarkets, Metro, Greenstock and Own Brand. That's a single leader across food retail formats and the own-brand business, sitting under group CEO Amanda Bardwell, who took the top job in September 2024.

Around the same time, long-serving Chief Marketing Officer Andrew Hicks left after 16 years with the group. A 16-year marketing leader departing as the structure consolidates is part of the same story. The standalone functional specialist at the top is being replaced by broader, integrated roles.

The Specialist Era Is Closing

For years, the FMCG org chart followed a clear logic. You had a commercial director, a marketing director, a digital lead, a customer or insights function, and they each ran their patch. The CEO sat above and joined it up. That structure worked when channels were distinct and a career could be built on depth in one of them.

That logic is breaking down because the business itself no longer separates cleanly. Retail media, ecommerce, loyalty and in-store all draw on the same customer, the same data, and increasingly the same P&L. A leader who only understands one of them can't make the trade-offs the others require.

Coles and Woolworths are responding by building roles that span the lot. The executive who runs digital now also answers for customer, media and store experience. That's a different job, and it needs a different person.

What This Means for Who You Hire

The implication for FMCG hiring is direct. The candidate with 20 years of depth in a single function is no longer the obvious choice for a senior role. Breadth is now the differentiator.

Six Degrees Executive, which tracks FMCG hiring in Australia, makes the point plainly. Its 2025 analysis found that the greater the breadth of customer and functional experience a candidate brings, the more competitive they are for leadership roles, with employers seeking strategic operators who combine category depth with omni-channel exposure.

The same report flags a growing need for data fluency, naming tools like Circana, NielsenIQ, Coles 360 and Quantium as core to the modern commercial role.

Put those two things together and you get the profile FMCG businesses are now hiring for:

• Cross-functional experience across commercial, digital, customer and channel, not depth in one
• The judgement to run trade-offs between functions that used to be separate
• Data fluency across the major retail and category platforms
• The ability to lead through a P&L that spans multiple channels at once
• 
  

That's a harder brief to fill, because the talent pool of genuine integrators is smaller than the pool of capable specialists.

The Risk for Mid-Tier FMCG

Coles and Woolworths can develop integrators internally. They have the scale, the rotation opportunities, and the bench to move people across functions and watch how they handle it. Most mid-tier FMCG businesses don't.

In my experience running FMCG businesses, the temptation when a senior role opens is to promote the best specialist into it. The strongest commercial mind, or the best marketer, gets the bigger title. That worked when the role was an extension of the function. It works less well when the role now spans functions the person has never run.

For founder-led and mid-tier FMCG businesses, the practical question is whether the next senior hire needs to be an integrator, and whether the person being lined up internally can actually operate across functions or has only ever led one. Getting that wrong is expensive, because a single-function leader placed in a cross-functional role tends to default to the part they know and neglect the rest.

What Boards Should Take From This

The Coles and Woolworths restructures are a signal about where the sector is heading. The largest, most sophisticated retailers in the country have decided that the future belongs to broad, integrated leadership roles, and they've rebuilt their structures to match.

Mid-tier FMCG businesses don't have to copy the structure. But they do have to think about the capability. When a senior role comes up, the question worth asking is whether you're hiring for the org chart you have or the one the market is moving towards.

For executive search, this changes the brief. Finding a strong functional specialist is straightforward. Finding a leader who can genuinely run across commercial, digital, customer and channel, and who has the data fluency to do it, takes a more deliberate process and a clear view of what the role actually requires.

If you're a founder, CEO, or board member in FMCG and you're weighing a senior appointment, it's worth being honest about whether the role you're filling needs a specialist or an integrator before you start the search.

ELR Executive is a specialist executive search firm focused exclusively on FMCG, food and beverage manufacturing, and fresh produce. If you're facing a senior leadership decision and want clarity before proceeding, a conversation with John Elliott may be a useful place to start.