Yet more change at the top for Brambles

The departure of Mr van der Laan, most recently the boss of CHEP Asia-Pacific, after eight years at Brambles takes the number of senior executives to leave the company to eight.

He was closely associated with the restructuring of the pallet hire company, the collapse of its dual listed structure and talks with Toll Holdings and Asciano in 2007.

But Kevin Shuba, whose future at Brambles has been under a cloud, will stay on after he was shuffled from his role as boss of CHEP Americas into a newly created role of customer development across the company's worldwide operations.

Jim Ritchie, who joined Brambles in June as the president of CHEP USA, will replace Mr Shuba as the group president of CHEP Americas next week.

Brambles's CHEP pallet business in the Americas has consistently been a poor performer, dragging down the performance of the company's key business worldwide.

In November, Mr Gorman had predicted a reduction in pallet buying in the US this year because Brambles was not adding customers in a sufficient quantity to offset some of the company's losses.

Mr Gorman said then that Brambles could grow its pallet operations in the US and continental Europe and seek opportunities in Eastern Europe, China and India.

Mr van der Laan's role as boss of CHEP Asia-Pacific will be taken by Peter Mackie, who has been filling in as Mr Gorman's temporary replacement as boss of CHEP Europe since November.

Brambles is expected to shortly announce a replacement for the head of CHEP Europe.

Mr Gorman said that the appointment of a boss for Europe, together with the others announced yesterday, would complete the changes to his senior management team.

In October Brambles forced out its embattled chief executive, Mike Ihlein, after just over two years, replacing him with Mr Gorman, who has been charged with the tough task of reviving its under-performing US business.

Brambles has faced growing competition in the US from iGPS of Florida, led by a former CHEP senior executive, Bob Moore. iGPS also has on its board the former Brambles and Coles boss John Fletcher.

Shares in Brambles closed up 2c at $7.04 yesterday, but are still about 16 per cent down from when they reached an 11-month high in September.