Mohd Haris Mohd Arshad, 49, a Malaysian, was appointed as Managing Director of Sime Darby Oils (SDO) in March 2019. He joined the Group in 2014 where prior to the Sime Darby de-merger, he led the then Sime Darby’s Global Trading & Marketing unit as well as the Plantation Division’s Downstream Manufacturing organisation. Today, as the Managing Director of SDO, he continues to lead the Group's 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 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 joined Nestle initially based in Kuala Lumpur, before moving 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 he was appointed as the 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 in 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, developing market analysis and price forecasting.
He 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.