Mike Middleton has been appointed marketing director of the new combined Cadbury/Kraft South African business. He will be responsible for the marketing and business strategies and execution of all the Cadbury/Kraft brands.

Middleton joined Cadbury in 2006 as marketing director for chocolate and most recently held the position of MEA (Middle East and Africa) chocolate category director Cadbury, responsible for flagship brands including Dairy Milk, Lunch Bar, PS and Flake.

He will be supported by Angela Brokke, from Kraft, who will head the grocery division as well as supporting Central and East Africa across all categories; Greg Banach on chocolate; and Alistair Mokoena on candy and gum.

Nathan Johnstone has been appointed chairman of Open Learning Holdings and Dr Deon van der Merwe has been appointed academic head of the Open Learning Group. Johnstone was selected as a Harvard South Africa Fellow for the 2000/2001 academic year and also as a visiting fellow for the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Science for the 2000/2001 academic year. He has served as chairman of the Independent Examinations Board during the period 2001 until 2009 and is a ministerial appointee on the Board of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme. He is the chief executive officer of the CIE Investment Company and has previously served as director of the Catholic Institute of Education and as headmaster of Christian Brothers College in Kimberley.

Van der Merwe is a registered psychometrist as well as a registered counselling psychologist. He is also qualified as an auditor for Higher Education. He fulfilled various positions at the Rand Afrikaans University for the past 20 years such as head of the learning centre; director of student academic development; head of enrolment management and lecturer in psychology, academic literacies and student development.

Debra Arnoldi-Radford has been appointed MD for design and chair manufacturing company, the Dauphin Human Design Group, a member of The Bidvest Group. She has qualifications in global executive development programmes, human resource and marketing management, was the human resources director for Enterprise Connection and spent a number of years with then Grant Andrews Office Furniture.