Argon & Co appoints Evert Westerhof, Ashley Darley and Chris Gardner
Operations and supply chain consultancy Argon & Co has added three members to its senior team in Australia, welcoming Evert Westerhof and Ashley Darley as associate partner, and Chris Gardner as managing principal.
Having just broken through the barrier of 100 staff in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), Argon & Co has signalled its intentions for 2023 with the hire of three senior professionals.
“Evert, Ashley and Chris are three strategic hires that will bring more strength and depth to our services ensuring we can meet our clients’ needs with market leading solutions. More importantly they are all brilliant people who our team and our clients will love working with,” said Paul Eastwood, ANZ Managing Partner of Argon & Co.
Evert Westerhof joins the business as leader of the Capital Projects service line. This practice helps clients across the complete life cycle of capital investments, from capital portfolio optimisation, developing major capital transformation programs to project governance execution and corporate venturing.
Westerhof brings close to two decades of engineering and manufacturing experience in the fast moving consumer goods sector to Argon & Co, gained across Europe, the Americas and Australasia. He most recently served as chief operations officer at Melrose Health and before that spent years as leader of the Engineering and Capital Projects division of dairy group Devondale Murray Goulburn.
“I am very excited to join Argon & Co, I believe we can make a big difference for our clients in combining our engineering capabilities with our expertise in strategic business analysis and operations,” said Westerhof on his move.
Company returnee Ashley Darley is back at Argon & Co following 18 months in industry, latterly serving as chief executive officer of Aboriginal-owned Gather Foods. “It’s a pleasure to be back, having been watching Argon & Co’s impact over the last year it was a no brainer when making the decision to return!”
Back in 2016, shortly after Eastwood founded Pollen Consulting Group, Darley was the firm’s first employee. In February 2022, Pollen join global player Argon & Co, which has 500+ staff and 16 offices worldwide.
In his new role, Darley will be responsible for establishing and growing Argon & Co presence in Western Australia. “The Western Australia is a bit of an untapped market for us, making this a very exciting opportunity for me personally and for the continued growth of Argon & Co.”
Chris Gardner meanwhile has been added to the Procurement practice. He joins the firm from 4C Associates, a UK-headquartered supply chain and operations consultancy, where Gardner spent over three years. Earlier, he served as head of global procurement at Merlin Entertainments, and spent over fifteen years at paper manufacturing Aylesford.
“I’m delighted to be joining the Argon & Co team to build out the Procurement service offering across the ANZ region,” said Gardner. “With this commitment to grow our Procurement capability, we are excited to further enhancing our end-to-end offering and the value we’re able to deliver to our clients.”
