Sanford people have a passion for the seafood industry and a depth of loyalty to our company that is truly unique. Our quality assurance, brand, sales and supply chain logistics teams are fully integrated with our fishing, farming and processing operations, to consistently deliver a superior high quality, safe product.
Our leaders’ role is to develop and nurture an environment that empowers our people to be the best they can be.
Meet the exec team.
Appointed to Board in 2021
Role at Sanford
Interim CEO and Member of Nominations Committee.
Craig has extensive managerial and governance experience across a wide range of sectors. He is Chair of Wellington Zoo.
Past roles show a long involvement in the Fisheries and Seafood sector including running the marketing, finance and quota management for his family company, Ōtākou Fisheries. He was the past Chief Executive of Ngāi Tahu Holdings, Chair of Ngāi Tahu Seafood, Poutama Trust, Moana Pacific, Prepared Foods, the NZ Seafood Standards Council, as well as serving on the Executive of the Fishing Industry Association Board, and numerous stakeholder organisations.
He has previously served on the Board of Airways New Zealand, NIWA, the Trade Liberalisation Network, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, and Co-chaired the PECC Fisheries Task Force (with Chinese Taipei).
Craig was a Commissioner with the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission (Te Ohu Kai Moana) as it worked though the Allocation model and giving effect to the Fisheries Settlement. After the agreement on allocation methodology Craig served on the board of Aotearoa Fisheries. He was also a member on the Te Ohu Kai Moana review panel.
Craig graduated from Otago University with a Masters in Zoology and is a proud alumni of the Te Hono group (class of 2015).
Paul joined Sanford in October 2021 as a highly experienced business executive and leader. His background includes CEO and CFO roles at Cavalier Corporation and Turners and Growers, two significant New Zealand businesses. Prior to that Paul has also worked in Europe at J P Morgan and Deutsche Bank. He brings with him great experience, capability, leadership and new dimensions to our team.
Paul sees Sanford as a New Zealand icon with over 150 years of history and believes there is a bright future ahead. He is helping steer Sanford forward as we work our way back from the impacts of Covid while continuing to feed the world in a sustainable fashion.
Louise joined the Sanford Executive team as the Chief Supply Chain Officer in January 2022 after serving nearly 7 years as GM Supply Chain for Sanford. Louise entered the business and has built up the capacity and capability of the supply chain function over that time to be able to respond to the challenges and opportunities of moving product from the ocean to our customers and consumers. Prior to joining Sanford, Louise has worked in diverse industry sectors including Chemicals, Beverages, FMCG and Third party Logistics within the UK, Australia and NZ. She has a Bachelor of Science in Transport & Distribution from Huddersfield University.
Louise is a mother to daughters and plays an active role in the development and mentoring of other women in the Supply Chain sector, seeing that diversity is key to businesses reaching their full potential.
After almost 30 years in the business, Andrew joined the Sanford Executive team in 2023 as Executive General Manager Mussels.
He joined Sanford in 1994 as Site Quality Manager and working his way up through the ranks to Group Quality Manager within 3 years. During his time with New Zealand’s oldest seafood company, he has held many roles, including China Manager, where he was responsible for working closely with international partners to operate a seafood processing plant in China, delivering successful new product formats to international clients. His next role with Sanford was Product Development Manager, before settling into his role as General Manager, Innovation back in 2014.
Andrew and his family relocated from Auckland, to beautiful Marlborough, where he was really able to focus on all things innovation at Sanford’s mussel powder extract centre.
In 2022, Andrew proudly opened Sanford’s purpose built innovation centre in Blenheim, Sanford Bioactives, where he is based today. This centre was a labour of love for Andrew and he couldn’t be more proud of his site and more importantly, his team who produce the highest-quality marine extract ingredients.
Andrew is University of Otago alumni, having graduated in 1994 with BSC Microbiology, Food Science and in 2003, came away with MBA in Business Administration.
Australian born and raised Richard Miller, joined the Sanford team in 2020 as Salmon Operations Manager before moving into the GM salmon Farming role in July 2021.
In 2023, Richard was promoted to Exec GM Salmon and joined the Sanford Exec team.
Richard has been in the seafood industry for the last 20 years and has a Bachelor’s of Science, majoring in Marine Biology from Flinders University.
Based in Dunedin, Richard, his wife and two son’s love to get out and about in nature and experience everything New Zealand has to offer.
Debra joined the Sanford Exec team in mid-2023 as Chief People Officer and has over 20 years of experience working in senior, international HR roles for businesses such as Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Danaher Industries, IAG, BAE Systems and GEC Marconi in roles that covered Europe, North America, Africa, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.
For the last two years Debra has run her own successful HR Consulting business, using her industry experience to provide interim HR support and assist with organisation redesigns.
Debra says she’s really excited to join a long-standing New Zealand business, one which is focused on growth.
Debra hails from the UK and in her spare time loves to go to the beach with friends and her two dogs, and collect tuatuas in the early morning light and catch fish and then get it battered at the local fish and chip shop before enjoying it on the deck.
