Astral Foods
Executive Directors
Gary Desmond Arnold
Gary Desmond Arnold
Appointed 1 October 2021 as Group Chief Operating Officer
Appointed 1 february 2025 as Chief Executive Officer
Experience: Gary started his career in 1997 as Animal Nutritionist for Meadow Feeds Delmas and Meadow Feeds
Welkom. In 1998 he was appointed as the Technical Manager for Meadow Feeds Delmas and in 2001 he was
appointed as the Technical Manager for Meadow Feeds northern region. In 2004 he was appointed as the
Managing Director of Provimi SSA (previously Nutec Southern Africa) and in 2006 he was appointed to the position
of COO for Meadow Feeds in the Western Cape.
Gary was appointed as Director: Business Development of Astral Operations Ltd on 1 November 2010 and in
October 2016 he was appointed to the position of Managing Director of Astral’s Agriculture Division.
Effective 1 October 2021, Gary has been appointed as Group COO of Astral. This position was introduced with
a specific mandate to optimise expansion opportunities and continuous improvement initiatives, whilst effectively
allocating capital and human resources across all Astral divisions. Gary was appointed as Chief Executive Officer on 1 February 2025.
External appointments: None
Dries Ferreira
Dries Ferreira
Dries graduated from the University of Port Elizabeth (now NMU) and later qualified as a Chartered Accountant (SA) in 2004 after completing his articles with PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. He was appointed CFO and Executive Director of Dawn Limited in 2007. Subsequently, Dries established a business providing niche turnaround, corporate finance advisory and various other C-suite solutions to clients in South Africa and Europe. This included serving as the CFO of Newpark REIT Limited as well as European CFO of a multinational ICT turnaround group. Dries has extensive experience serving as Executive Director in the listed company space. He was appointed as CFO Designate of Astral on 10 January 2022.
