A small company in Mangere Bridge has caught the eye of ex-Ecostore CEO and internationally qualified business leader
Mitch Cuevas.
Cuevas has turned his attention on Clean Planet, New Zealand’s first truly sustainable cleaning company, which he joined
in July of 2010 as a board member, taking up the role of CEO a few months later.
“Clean Planet as a company is aligned to what I stand for as a person,” says Cuevas, who has an MBA from London Business
School and a GM qualification from Harvard Business School. “After seeing such good things on the board, I couldn’t wait
to step in and shape it into my vision as a leading New Zealand company.”
Since becoming CEO and MD of the company, Cuevas has been busy working on a soon-to-be-launched range of home sanitising
products based on natural ingredients, as well as facilitating the highly sought-after approval of the Asthma Foundation
as part of their Sensitive Choice programme.
Most recently, and relevant to Clean Planet, Mitch was the CEO of Ecostore. In two years he grew the business from $7M
to just under $21M and delivered the company’s first profit in its 18 years of operation.
He also achieved “Sustainable Business of the year 2009”, “Deloitte’s Fast 50” and secured entry into the NZTE
Better-By-Design programme to move Ecostore forward and secure $400K in development support.
His career has been centred on FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) for 20 years. He has worked for, or consulted to, a
number of global companies: Nabisco Foods, Cadbury Schweppes, Unilever, Kelloggs, Ericsson, Ford Motor Company, United
Airlines, Telefonica, and Heinken.
Locally he has been a senior international manager for Fonterra Brands and a business development and supply chain
director for Goodman Fielder.
Mitch is originally from California, but immigrated to New Zealand in 2002 after having spent a number of years in
Europe and South America. He speaks 3 languages fluently and is happily married and has 2 young boys – 3 yrs and 5 years
old.
Mitch has invested some of his own capital into Clean Planet and says: “With Clean Planet, there’s a real opportunity to
change the game a bit - in just a few little steps, we can improve people’s lives without too much effort on their part.
That’s exciting.”
ENDS