Jim Athanas has replaced Steve Makins as the managing director of floorcare specialist Nilfisk-Advance Australia and New Zealand. Athanas will be in charge of both the consumer and commercial sides of the Nilfisk-Advance business.
Makins departed last month after running Nilfisk-Advance for five years.
Athanas joins has joined the company after one year as a director of Your Growth Consulting. Before that, he was the vice president and general manager for water care at Ecolab.
Working out of Nilfisk’s western Sydney head office, Athanas has listed increasing brand awareness and accelerating growth as his main objectives. To achieve the second, Athanas has indicated that Nilfisk will be rolling out new ranges of vacuum cleaners. To complement this, Athanas also plans on strengthening Nilfisk’s customer service offering.
“My focus in the short term is to get to know our people and get to know our customers and our service offerings,” Athanas said.
“One of the main reasons for the Nilfisk’s success has been its people and its innovation. Without people we don’t have a business and without innovative products and services we cannot provide solutions to our customers’ needs.”
Athanas describes himself as “a widely experienced executive with international operating responsibility throughout Asia Pacific, extending from general management to sales and marketing in the business-to-business Industrial, chemical, petrochemical and refining, municipal, mining and metals, good and beverage, retail and commercial and institutional market segments”.
In other Nilfisk-Advance HR news, Anita Gounder has left her post; she was formerly the national sales and marketing manager.