Gordon Cairns

Gordon Cairns is a Celt, born in Bridge of Allan, Scotland. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated with an M.A. honours degree in English.

Gordon started work in Marketing, for the pet food division of Nestle, followed by selling and marketing chocolate bars for Cadbury. Moving up the food chain, he was Sales and Marketing Director for the Snack food division of Imperial Foods, before accepting a position with the largest Snack food company in the world, Frito Lay. Based at their headquarters in Dallas, Texas, he spent 12 months as International Director of Marketing.
Gordon Cairns was then posted to Australia, as Managing Director of their Snack food business, where he spent 5 wonderful years. In 1993 he agreed to return to England, to serve as Frito Lay’s Chief Financial Officer for Europe. For family reasons, he requested a move back to Australia, and in 1994 PepsiCo appointed him Operations Director of KFC, followed by Managing Director for Australia, NZ and RSA. This was followed by 18 months as the MD of Pepsi Cola Australia.
After 10 years with PepsiCo, 3 continents, and more houses than he cares to remember, Gordon Cairns decided to settle permanently in Australia, resigned and joined Lion Nathan, initially as the MD of their Australian beer business, and then as CEO for the last 7 fantastic years.
Gordon Cairns is currently a director of Westpac Banking Corporation, Opera Australia and The Centre for Independent Studies and a board member of Origin Energy . He is also an advisor to Caliburn Partnership and McKinsey and a member of the Asia Pacific Advisory Board of CVC Capital Partners. From pet food to beer, after 33 years of hard working Gordon retired in 2004, to spend time with his wife Jane, and their 2 children, Debbie and Neil.