Craig Cotton

Affero Ventures

Founding Director

Craig’s background has been anchored in people, customer, sales, marketing and strategic leadership within the FMCG industry spanning experience across NZ, Australia and Asia Pacific Markets within nonalcoholic and more recently alcoholic beverages.

For the past four years he has been Chief Executive Officer of The Better Drinks Co (previously Charlie’s) and more recently has assumed responsibility for the commercial leadership of Independent Liquor New Zealand Ltd as Country Manager which is also part of the Asahi family.

Craig’s key achievements in the past four years, includes overseeing Pepsi Brands removal from KFC and Pizza Hut outlets and replaced by Coca-Cola brands in January 2016 - the single biggest deal achieved in CCAmatil’s history. Craig is extremely proud of The Better Drinks Co. team - growing profit over 500% since 2012, via significant change across the business and the model which they operate.

This has seen the team establish a new corporate identity, company name, vision, values and expand manufacture internationally into Japan.