Matt Gurrie joins Simplot as CIO

FMCG food company, Simplot Australia, has found itself a new CIO with Matt Gurrie taking up the role in January.

Simplot is behind food brands Birds Eye, Lean Cuisine, Leggos, and others. It started recruiting for the CIO in May 2015, after Samantha McIntyre left in April. McIntyre founded FitFinder in August last year, and plans to launch her startup business soon.

Gurrie will be responsible for leading transformation projects, and finding opportunities to improve business with customers and internal operations through technology.

Gurrie was previously the global IT run manager for mining and metals company, Orica, and led initiatives such as implementing an application management services transformation, and developing a remote compute 'box to cloud' strategic life cycle.

Before that, he held various IT manager roles at Australia Post, Officeworks, Coles, and Hewlett Packard Australia.

Gurrie wrote on his LinkedIn profile that he has managed a number of multi-disciplined technology and business projects at these organisations.

"These projects and transformation programs have included substantial changes to existing business practices and ultimately led to vastly improved business and customer outcomes,” he said.

In November 2015, Simplot partnered with startup accelerator, Slingshot, to launch Simplot Ignite.

The program is about supporting food tech startups in developing their ideas around nutri-genomics and personalised nutrition, customer acquisition and retention, healthy ageing, agribusiness, and food convenience. Simplt Ignite is offering startups in this space $30,000 of investment.

CIO Australia has contacted Gurrie for comment.