Meet the maker: EPM talks to Peter Neve

In this latest instalment of ‘Meet the maker’, we sit down with Peter Neve, chief marketing officer at ACG — a company that offers integrated manufacturing solutions for the pharmaceutical industry.

1. Could you briefly describe yourself?

My background is in machine vision and industrial ID. In the 1980’s I founded and managed a start-up business that developed innovative, software based industrial vision products. At that time, the technology was at a very nascent stage in the sector, so it was great to be part of something so challenging from the very start. The UK business was acquired by Cognex Corporation, and I moved into a marketing role, initiallycovering Europe, but progressively expanding to global VP of marketing.

I believe that every business needs access to first class marketing. My goal is to use my experience and to provide ACG (a growing and ambitious company), with the skills and knowledge to achieve outstanding results.

2. Please describe your average day in five words.

Making everything more effective — managed to save a word!

3. At what point did you decide to be involved in the pharma market?

I have previous experience of the pharmaceutical sector, when I worked in machine vision. The opportunity to work with ACG arose last year, and it proved to be a great fit with my previous high-tech pharma experience.What initially attracted me to the company was that it was growing and successful.

4. What has been your biggest achievement?

Getting ACG to focus on the customer benefits of our integrated product range. As part of this we’ve just completed a recent project to replace multiple business and regional brands into a single ACG identity that we are promoting globally.

As the only supplier of end-to-end manufacturing solutions to pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturers of tablet and capsule based products, ACG is a really unique company. We work with such a wide range of solutions — covering everythingfrom empty hard capsules and packaging films & foils, to tablet and capsule production machines, inspection systems, and track & trace systems. I am delighted to be a part of developing the successful expansion and evolution of the company.

5. What would you say is your worst trait?

Impatience. I always want to get good ideas implemented immediately.

6. What do you love about your job?

Exploiting untapped opportunities.

7. If anything, what would you change about your job?

I would like to see increased focus on strategy, and less on execution. We are already beginning to see this happening, because we have created a great marketing team, which was my first priority when joining ACG.

8. If you weren’t in the pharma industry what job would you liked to do?

I would like to have been an architect combining creativity and engineering - two of my greatest passions!

9. What challenges do you foresee being important over the next 10 years?

The overall customer experience is critical, and we will continue to remain 'absolutely committed' to this. It will be important for companies to remain one step ahead — offering Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and IoT solutions.

Big Data analysis and AI will remain at the forefront when it comes to optimising the customer experience.

10. In your opinion, what will offer the biggest opportunities in the future?

When it comes to manufacturing, I believe we will continue to see huge growth within the nutraceutical and food supplements industry, especially in the US.

For ACG the opportunities are vast in terms of being able to exploit our full product range toas many customers as possible.These are exciting times.