EXECUTIVE INSIGHT
Q . TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR ROLE
» My name is Phil Livingston , I ’ m 57 years old and I ’ m an English citizen – albeit now with a Swiss passport as well . I live in the Greater Geneva area , closer to Lausanne , in Switzerland , and I ’ m married to Coryn , who ’ s also English . We have a 19-year-old daughter , Siena , who is in the UK attending university .
Our parent company is based in Japan , and our tobacco business is headquartered in Geneva . We take a lot of pride in upholding the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen – or continuous improvement .
As SVP of JTI ’ s Global Supply Chain , my responsibilities run essentially through the entire supply chain , including our leaf operations . We purchase about half of our leaf from contracted growers – that ’ s 68,000 small farmers around the world – while the other half we buy from established suppliers .
I ’ m also responsible for procurement operations for our non-tobacco materials – mainly paper-based products . That runs through into our manufacturing operations as well . We have 36 factories around the world and a footprint in more than 130 markets .
Most recently , we ’ ve taken responsibility for the warehouses in our local markets , which used to be run locally . So , we now look after the full , end-to-end supply chain , including all the logistics and planning operations .
“ One of the things I ’ m most proud of is the work we do in each community at the heart of our operations ”
Q . HOW DID YOU END UP WORKING IN SUPPLY CHAIN ?
» I originally graduated as a chemical engineer from Newcastle University and , from the beginning , I ’ ve worked in the consumer goods area .
My career started with P & G , where I worked for 20 years – originally in R & D , but mostly in the engineering space and then increasingly in manufacturing .
I then moved into the consumer area in pharmaceuticals with Novartis , which was when I moved to Switzerland , before spending five years with Coty , a major beauty player and the largest fragrance manufacturer in the world . At those companies my responsibilities included engineering , safety , quality , packaging development , innovation – basically all of the technical functions within the supply chain .
20 September 2024