Dive Brief:

• Former Kimberly-Clark Global CDO and CIO Manoj Kumbhat has moved to McCain Foods to serve as chief technology and information officer, McCain Foods said in a LinkedIn post last week.
• Kumbhat is replacing former CTO Jillian Moffatt, who was named as the company’s new regional president for Great Britain and Ireland and served in the CTO role since September 2020.
• In a LinkedIn post Saturday, Kumbhat said he was “excited about our digital future and the opportunities to leverage digital, tech and data” at McCain Foods. Kimberly-Clark has posted several CIO job postings on its career page in the last month, including a number of divisional CIO positions. Kimberly-Clark and McCain Foods did not respond to requests for comment.

Dive Insight:

Kumbhat spent more than six years at Kimberly-Clark, first as a CTO and VP of IT engineering, architecture and applications and before assuming his most recent role, according to his LinkedIn. Kumbhat stressed the importance of CIOs familiarizing themselves with how their company operates by taking customer visits or field trips to sites.

At McCain Foods, data and analytics enhance farming efficiency and increase transparency. McCain Foods recently acquired a predictive crop intelligence portfolio from analytics technology firm Resson after working and collaborating with the company for the past nine years, according to a June announcement.

The goal was to develop algorithms that forecast farm yields based on the assessment of potato fields and crop development through remote sensing technologies. 

"The acquisition is pivotal to McCain's innovation agenda and our ambition to use digital technology to transform agriculture," Moffatt said in a statement. "The technology provides productivity enhancement to farmers and food processors by leveraging actionable insights from their field data to make predictive decisions that improve long-term yields and profitability.”