David Ashton

Market Edge provides consulting and management development services in the areas of strategy, marketing, sales and innovation. We specialize in turning leading edge business thinking into practical processes to meet our clients’ needs. Market Edge has a global team of consultants and specialists. Our team have line management experience and provide our clients with practical, results-oriented solutions.

Following the divestment of Lonza Speciality Ingredients and the creation of Arxada, I led the global Wood & Crop Protection business. The role had full P&L accountability for approximately $500m of revenue. The business unit included nine production plants, 4 R&D sites, and 130 commercial staff, servicing 1,500 customers with ingredients and fully finished chemical formulations. During my time in the role, I successfully led the team to develop and implement a strategy, leading to double-digit growth.

I was responsible for leading the marketing group of the $1.2bn business unit, Microbial Control Solutions, working in the hygiene, home and personal care, paints, material, wood, and crop protection markets. This role required me to develop the team ways of working and restructure marketing resources to reflect the strategic focus of the business. In this role I managed an $18m budget and a team of 45 people based around the globe. My key focus was to manage the innovation cycle from concept to delivery, working closely with sales and R&D. From the middle of 2020 a large part of my time was dedicated to the sale process of Lonza Speciality Ingredients to the private equity companies Bain Capital and Cinven.

I had the responsibility to lead the combined Crop Protection and Seeds, Marketing and Technical function with a direct team of 20 people, with a further functional team of 130 people located across AME. During my tenure, I was accountable for combining five marketing teams from different business units and a technical department into a single function, delivering efficiency targets whilst maintaining and promoting a complex product portfolio over a diverse geography.

I successfully built a team that delivered Marketing and Sales Excellence skills and processes across the territory to support growth in this diverse and unstable environment. Two of the team’s key achievements over this period was the introduction of Customer Financial Solutions in South Africa that now secure 50% of sales and developing Tanzania from a direct business model to a local structure to support the launch of new product lines. Together with the Territory Head and Regional Director we delivered a strategic review of Africa to the Senior Executive Committee, securing a $500m investment over a 10-year time frame.

A member of the commercial leadership team with the responsibility to develop Customer Marketing in East Europe. During this time I introduced campaign management and the CRM platform Salesforce.com into Ukraine and Romania to drive Field Force Effectiveness. I also conducted a go-to-market review in Central Russia building a new segmentation to allow a better focus of resources and increased customer reach, this was a pilot for the eventual strategy rolled out across the whole Russian business.

I was promoted from the UK business to the EAME regional HQ to train employees in key countries the concept of Customer Marketing, the principles of CRM and the benefits of data led marketing and sales teams. This role also acted as the commercial lead for a cross-functional team delivering the necessary systems to support the journey.

I was responsible for implementing a data-based “one-to-one” marketing approach. Using a segmentation of farmers created using loyalty data we doubled our grower reach, by tailoring the use of digital, physical and face-to-face communication. The result was a measurable 3% market share increase over 3 years.

I was responsible for managing two key accounts, a group of influencers and creating "pull" with 50 end users. During my time in this role I increased my sales revenue by 20%.

Responsible for asset stripping and closing Somtej KFT, during this period I also worked as arable manager at Pilisi to update agronomic techniques

Trained and worked as an agronomist providing advice to farmers and selling agrochemicals and seed