Morrisons bolsters wine team

Wm Morrison Supermarkets has advanced an ambitious bid to increase its share of the UK wine market by £100 million with two senior appointments to its team.

Mark Jarman, Morrisons’ new head of wine operations

Former Seckford Agencies’ business development director Mark Jarman will now lead the retailer’s wine team as head of wine operations. The role will see him take charge of both range and quality, as well as overseeing new product development, sourcing and establishing a UK bottling operation.

Describing Morrisons as “a retailer evolving at pace,” Jarman commented: “There’s great potential for development and growth in the wine category and I’m looking forward to working with my team to develop and implement strategies to achieve this.”

Meanwhile Clive Donaldson, an MW student who has previously worked with the multiple retailer sector in his former role at Australian Vintage, takes on the newly created position of wine sourcing manager.

Tasked with working alongside the supermarket’s buying team to find wines “worth crossing the road for,” Donaldson’s appointment marks a move by Morrisons to “further strengthen” its wine portfolio “in order to help customers discover new and exciting wines they will love.”

Commenting on his new role, Donaldson said: “Becoming part of the Morrisons wine team at this time is extremely exciting. With increasing store sales, extended online offering and a fast growing convenience channel, I am really looking forward to helping deliver a really good-value, interesting range of wines which appeal to all Morrisons customers.”

The appointments follow a number of steps taken by the UK’s fourth largest food retailer – it currently has 479 stores across the country – within the last year to improve its wine offer and sales.

November saw the retailer launch Morrisons Cellar, a website dedicated to wine sales, while this year it implemented a radical change to both in-store and online merchandising with the introduction of a “Taste Test”, which allows consumers to select wine by style rather than region.

With the help of this new team, online outlet and store layout, Morrisons has set itself a target of adding £100m to its wine sales within the next three years.