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Darigold's CEO, Joe Coote, is set to step down from his role as he intends to return to his home country, Australia. Allan Huttema, the company's chairman of the board, has been appointed as the interim CEO, effectively immediately. Having spent 12 years working globally in the dairy sector, Coote joined Darigold three years ago as the president of its international ingredients division. He was subsequently promoted to CEO in 2022. Meanwhile, Huttema – one of Darigold's 300 farmer-owners – has been a member of the business' board of directors for nine years. He has held the position of chairman of the board for the last three years. Huttema said: "I take over as interim CEO with the benefit of having an extremely capable leadership team in place, including a number of Darigold veterans and newer leaders with proven track records across the dairy and consumer packaged goods sectors. Our business is structured to run around two divisions – business to business and business to consumer – each with experienced, proven leaders running them." He continued: "I have full confidence that the team and the structure we have in place will help ensure that we continue serving our customers in the way they have come to expect from us." "Joe took over as CEO at a time when we were early into a transformation to grow and modernise our business. Under his leadership, we took significant steps forward on that effort, beginning construction of our new facility in Pasco, launching a migration of our business management systems, and beginning to develop a culture rooted in excellence in operations." Coote added: "Serving as CEO of Darigold the last two years was a great privilege. I have enormous respect and admiration for our farmer-owners and the teams across our business that work so hard to keep our customers stocked with great, high-quality dairy products. Having been away from my home country for many years now, my family and I are ready to return to Australia to begin new adventures back home."