Matthew Daneman

Staff writer;

A former top executive at the corporate home of Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort will be the next head of the company behind such beers as Genny Light, Honey Brown and Labatt.

Florida Ice & Farm Co., the parent company of Rochester-headquartered beer company North American Breweries, announced Thursday that it had hired John K. "Kris" Sirchio to replace outgoing CEO Rich Lozyniak. Sirchio starts Monday.

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He most recently was global chief marketing officer of wine and spirits giant Brown-Forman Corp., a major competitor of Victor's Constellation Brands Inc. Sirchio left that position at the end of 2012 in a shakeup of top management. He brings a lengthy marketing background to the job, with 13 years of marketing work at Procter & Gamble.

In a statement, Florida Ice & Farm CEO Ramón Mendiola said Sirchio "is a strong executive leader with globally recognized expertise in general management, marketing, brand strategy and consumer insights. He has demonstrated success in building and growing some of the world's best companies and brands. He also has a proven track record of creating strategies that build strong teams and organizations that deliver breakthrough results."

Sirchio was not available for comment Thursday.

North American is the home of the Genesee brewery and brands, as well as Vermont-based Magic Hat and Seattle-based Pyramid Breweries. It also has the U.S. rights to Canadian beer brand Labatt.

Sirchio inherits a considerably different beer company than the one Lozyniak took over with the formation of North American in 2009. Private equity firm KPS Capital Partners formed the company using Rochester's iconic Genesee Brewery and Labatt's U.S. business as the foundation.

In the preceding years, the St. Paul Street brewery had suffered business woes for years. North American then invested millions of dollars not only into brewery upgrades but also into marketing efforts and a number of acquisitions of breweries and alehouses around the country. And it opened its Genesee Brew House brewpub, overlooking Rochester's High Falls, in 2012. That same year, Costa Rica-based Florida Ice bought North American from KPS.

North American employs about 1,100, including more than 500 at the Genesee brewery — up from close to 200 in 2009.

Lozyniak's leaving was announced in January.

MDANEMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com

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