Iceland Foods boss to speak at Mahdlo business breakfast
Richard Walker OBE, Executive Chairman of Iceland Foods, will be the guest speaker at Mahdlo Youth Zone's first business breakfast of 2025 in Oldham. The event aims to raise funds for youth support services, with tickets priced at £9.50. Walker, a prominent environmentalist and business leader, will share insights on sustainability and business acumen.
Richard Walker OBE, Executive Chairman of Iceland Foods and chairman of the company’s charitable foundation, will headline Mahdlo’s first business breakfast of 2025 on Thursday, 29 May, at Mahdlo Youth Zone on Sir Norman Stoller Way in Oldham town centre.
Tickets cost £9.50, covering breakfast and refreshments, with every pound channelled into the charity’s programmes for borough youngsters aged 8-19, and up to 25 for those with disabilities. Mahdlo, which last year raised £1.6 million and is targeting £1.9 million in 2025 to reach roughly 4,000 young people, offers activities and support both at its town-centre base and across Oldham.
Walker, a chartered surveyor who joined the supermarket chain his parents founded in 1970 after building property firm Bywater Properties in the UK and Poland, started at Iceland stacking shelves and serving tills before managing a store and moving to head office. He became Managing Director in 2018 and Executive Chairman in January 2023, overseeing people, property, customers and sustainability. Under his leadership Iceland removed palm oil from own-label products, pledged to eliminate plastic packaging, published its full plastic footprint and committed to net-zero carbon by 2040.
Lucy Lees, Mahdlo Youth Zone CEO, said: “We are delighted Richard has agreed to join us at our business breakfast next month. His extensive business knowledge and acumen, commitment to the environment and support for charities at home and abroad, make him an ideal speaker to share his thoughts and methods with the borough’s business community and the people operating in it. It promises to be an insightful and inspirational morning.”
Walker, appointed OBE in the late Queen’s final Birthday Honours list for services to business and the environment, is also Chairman of Bywater Properties, currently in a £1 billion joint venture with Sumitomo Forestry to advance low-carbon development across Europe. In 2023 he climbed Mount Everest with Kenton Cool, raising £1 million for the world’s first Rare Dementia Support Centre, and serves as ambassador for The Wildlife Trusts and Alzheimer’s Research UK, patron of Cheshire Wildlife Trust, vice-president of Fauna & Flora International and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.
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