German brewer Oettinger Getränke has appointed Thilo Pomykala as its new CEO.
In a statement, Oettinger said the 55-year-old took up the role as of yesterday (1 April).
The family-owned company said Pomykala will oversee marketing, sales, product development and logistics.
He succeeds Stefan Blaschak, who stepped down in November.
Pomykala joins with experience across the food and other FMCG sectors. His most recent post was a more than six-year stint as managing director at Hochwald Food, where his remit covered sales, marketing and innovation management.
Before that, Pomykala was a member of the executive board of spirits group Semper idem Underberg between July 2017 and August 2019, having previously led sales, marketing and product development at dairy producer Meggle from February 2012 to June 2017.
Pia Kollmar, owner and managing director overseeing finance, strategy and purchasing, said: “With Thilo R Pomykala, we are gaining an experienced leader with proven national and international FMCG expertise.
"We have known each other for many years, and I am very pleased that we will now be working together at Oettinger Getränke.”
Oettinger also outlined the wider leadership line-up.
Dominika Steinberg, who has worked at the brewer since 2015 and most recently led HR and IT, will take on additional responsibility for production and engineering.
Founded in 1731 and Oettinger produces around six million hectolitres and says it is among Germany’s biggest beverage producers.
The group fills roughly one billion bottles and cans each year across beer, beer-mix drinks and soft drinks, supplying markets worldwide.
The leadership change follows labour disputes earlier this year at the company’s headquarter site in Oettingen.
In September, Blaschak welcomed a union offer of arbitration to find an agreement on pay, where trade union NGG threatened the company with fresh strikes if a substantial pay offer was not put forward.
At the time, the union said it wanted its members to receive “significant” wage increases.
Earlier last year, Blaschak criticised the NGG, claiming its wage demands were “completely out of touch with reality and damaging to the company given the devastating sales situation in our industry”.
