Guild member Clive Rainbird retires from his role in marketing communications at Bayer CropScience at the end of 2011. And while he hopes to devote more time to relaxing pursuits and interests, he is keen to keep his hand in with some freelance commissions.
“My career in agriculture started with Boots Farm Sales, which was the agricultural arm of ‘Boots the Chemist’ in 1970 and called it day at Bayer exactly forty-one and a half years and five different companies later,” says Clive.
In 1980, Boots and Fisons merged their crop protection businesses to form FBC which, by 1984, had been purchased by the German pharmaceutical business, Schering. In 1994 Schering and fellow German chemical company Hoechst merged their agrochemical businesses to form AgrEvo.
Further consolidation saw AgrEvo and Rhone-Poulenc merging by 2000 to form the Franco-German life-science company, Aventis and its CropScience division but the business lasted only two years before being acquired by Bayer in 2002.
“During this time I worked first as a fieldsman (we weren’t called agronomists in those days!), selling a wide range of products and services across crop protection, as well as veterinary products and feed supplements,” Clive recalls. “From sales I moved into training and then into sales management. It was on the formation of AgrEvo in 1994 that my career moved into PR and communications – and it is in this field that I have spent the past 17 years.”
Clive and his family moved to Norfolk when he was required to work at AgrEvo’s UK commercial headquarters at East Winch Hall, near King’s Lynn and, despite office moves to Ongar, Hauxton and Cambridge Science Park, west Norfolk is still where they live.
“Although retiring from Bayer at the end of December and hoping to devote more time to golf, fly-fishing, walking the Norfolk coast, bird watching, photography and countless other pleasurable and hedonistic activities (notwithstanding Mrs Rainbird’s demands for decorating, home improvements, shopping etc.) I shall be actively looking for freelance work in the fields of public relations, writing, training etc,” says Clive. “Through the Guild, I look forward to maintaining contact with the many journalists with whom I have worked over the past 17 years.”
Clive can be contacted using his new email address or mobile number 07971 119950.
