MGP Ingredients, Inc. has appointed Scott Phillips to the newly created position of vice president of supply chain operations. Additionally, Don Coffey will oversee innovation and commercialization activities for the company’s alcohol, as well as protein and starch ingredients in his new role as executive vice president of sales and marketing.


MGP Ingredients, Inc. has appointed Scott Phillips to the newly created position of vice president of supply chain operations. Additionally, Don Coffey will oversee innovation and commercialization activities for the company’s alcohol, as well as protein and starch ingredients in his new role as executive vice president of sales and marketing.

The moves are part of a broader reorganization that will result in a combination of temporary lay-offs and early retirements affecting 16 non-union personnel at the company’s headquarters facility in Atchison, Kan., by the end of June. An additional four non-union employees and four union workers at MGPI’s Pekin, Ill., facility also will be affected.      

“The resizing of our plant operations’ footprint in recent months combined with our intensified concentration on producing and commercializing only those products, which bring unique value to our customer partners, have driven this action,” said Tim Newkirk, company president and CEO. “MGPI has become a more streamlined organization, making it imperative for us to evaluate and reconfigure certain job functions and responsibilities to more accurately match our organizational needs while helping bring greater balance to the cost structure of our resized business.”

Phillips will oversee all manufacturing-related processes, from the acquisition of raw materials through the production, packaging, warehousing and delivery of MGPI’s protein, starch and alcohol ingredients. Phillips joined MGPI in 2007 and has served as corporate director of manufacturing for the company’s ingredient solutions business segment.

In assuming his new position, Phillips takes on the oversight of alcohol production responsibilities that previously were managed by Randy Schrick, vice president of engineering, who also had served as corporate director of manufacturing for distillery operations since last June. Schrick, who has been with MGPI since 1973 and is also a former member of the company’s board, will continue in his engineering role.   

Meanwhile, Coffey has served as executive vice president of the company’s ingredient solutions business segment since last June and was vice president of innovation for one year prior to that.

For more information, go to www.mgpingredients.com.