Mohd Haris Mohd Arshad, 51, a Malaysian, was appointed as Group Chief Operating Officer of Sime Darby Plantation Berhad (SD Plantation) on 1 January 2024. He is also the Managing Director of Sime Darby Oils (SDO), appointed in March 2019. He joined the Group in 2014. Before the Sime Darby demerger, he led the then Sime Darby’s Global Trading & Marketing unit as well as the Plantation Division’s Downstream Manufacturing division.
In his role as the Group Chief Operating Officer, he oversees SD Plantation’s upstream operations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea & Solomon Island, SDO, and Research & Development (R&D). Additionally, he spearheads key transformation programmes, and various corporate exercises for the Group in its journey towards operational excellence, environmental stewardship, and innovation. Mohd Haris chairs the Operations Leadership Team in SD Plantation, a team that is instrumental in ensuring seamless alignment and coordination of SD Plantation’s strategic efforts. Since 2019, as the Managing Director of SDO, he has been leading the efforts in market expansion and revenue growth, focusing on bulk trading, differentiated product offering for industrial customers (B2B) and high-quality end-consumer products for its B2C segment.
He began his career in 1995 as a trader with Cargill in Malaysia, where he was involved in the trading of palm oil and palm products and ensuring an uninterrupted supply of feedstock to the refineries. He moved to the Philippines in 1999 to join Cargill’s copra crushing operation where he was involved in sourcing copra across the Philippines and merchandising coconut oil in Europe. In 2001, he commenced his journey with Nestle, beginning in Kuala Lumpur and later transitioning to London to join the company’s global cocoa procurement and price risk management desk. In 2006, he relocated to Singapore to establish Nestle’s Commodity Procurement Centre for Asia, Oceania and Africa Regions and was appointed General Manager and Head of Global Oils and Fats. In those capacities, he was responsible for leading supplier development works as well as regional oils and fats procurement initiatives. In 2010, he joined Unilever in Singapore as Director of Commodity Risk Management where he led a team of price risk managers located in the USA, Switzerland, and Singapore. The team was responsible for managing Unilever’s global oils and fats price exposure within the company’s annual spend budget, while developing market analysis and price forecasting.
Mohd Haris graduated from the University of Arizona, in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration. In 2019, he attended the Advanced Management Program (AMP) at the Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts.