Darren O’Brien had spent three years living in Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland, when in October 2019 he received news he had been dreading for months.

The then president of the multi billion-dollar European cheese and grocery business of global food behemoth Mondelez International knew his father Paul had been fighting a battle with lung cancer for six years.

Now the cancer had returned with a vengeance and his father had been given a matter of months to live by his doctor.

The Sydney-born and bred O’Brien jetted across the globe back to his home town and headed straight to his father’s home at Moss Vale in the NSW Southern Highlands.

But Paul O’Brien was in no mood to grieve. Instead, he insisted on a whirlwind road trip to the nation’s capital.

In Canberra, they dined on fivestar cuisine and drank fine wine at the famed Ottoman restaurant, the favoured haunt of the nation’s political elite. The next day they ventured to Old Parliament House.

“We went into the chamber of the House of Representatives where Dad got me to sit on the government front bench so he could take a photo. As he took the photo he said ‘Just remember you always promised me one day you were going to be the prime minister’,”

O’Brien now tells of the vow he had made to his father 25 years earlier, which Paul had somewhat embarrassingly recalled.

“I suspect he’s still now looking down, waiting for it to happen.”

Darren O’Brien still muses about his ambitions to be the most powerful person in the country.

His Zoom backdrop even features a photo of the prime minister’s office from the Old Parliament House.

It also illustrates the motto he was taught from a young age by his father and has long lived by: every day is a new opportunity to change the world.

O’Brien was only seven when his mother Carolyn died from a form of lymphatic cancer known as Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In her final days, Paul promised his wife he would take Darren and his sister Danielle to Disneyland.

Despite the hefty cost of Carolyn’s treatment and the grief following her death, Paul followed through on his promise to take his children on the holiday of a lifetime.

He also borrowed the money to fund his son’s education at St Aloysius College in Sydney, which set O’Brien up to later complete a Bachelor of Business Degree at the University of Technology.

“There was a special bond that happened between a father and a son, and also with my sister Danielle, when suddenly it was just the three of us,” O’Brien says.

His father’s business career as a senior executive in various food and pharmaceutical companies, culminating with the CEO role of Parke-Davis Pharmaceuticals – now owned by Pfizer – also inspired O’Brien to forge a career in the food sector, where he has held roles at Fonterra, Mars Petcare, Diageo and the Smiths Snack Food Company.

For the past 13 years he has been a senior executive at Mondelez, the second-largest snack food company in the world after Pepsico, which boasts brands such as Cadbury chocolate, Oreo cookies, Philadelphia cheese, Ritz and Captain’s Table crackers.

In May last year he moved back to Australia from Switzerland – where he was running Mondelez’s billion-dollar global meals business – to be its president for Australia and New Zealand, based in Melbourne.

He says Mondelez has enjoyed strong growth over the past 18 months during Covid-19 and had its six manufacturing plants running for the duration of the crisis.

No staff were laid off, wages cut or government subsidies sought.

“We’re seeing a lot more snacking consumption. So we are seeing EBIT growth, both in terms of the categories being up, but also particularly on our brands when you have a look at things like Cadbury and Oreo,” he says.

“We’ll get growth, both in Australia and also in New Zealand, that will be at the high end of our expectations this year. So in that sort of 4-5 per cent growth range.

Historically, this was a market that people thought if you got one to 2 per cent growth, you’re doing well.”

O’Brien, who is chairman of the Australian Food and Grocery Council – where he has been working with the federal and state governments in managing the food sector through the Covid pandemic – is now also determined to take Australian technology to the global stage.

In March this year, Mondelez agreed to buy Australian cracker business Gourmet Food, whose brands include premium cracker labels OB Finest, Olina’s Bakehouse and Crispbic, for more than $400m.

The business is now exporting to Japan and the US.

“There’s a lot more capability there in terms of sweet offerings.

We’ve already started a trial in China through our Mondelez businesses there of the Gourmet Food product range. That was always part of the vision of what we wanted with this business, to take it to the world,” O’Brien says.

“For me the concept of being able to take crackers made in Dandenong to the US is amazing.

“We’re making a major investment next year in (Gourmet Food’s) Dandenong factory that will give us more capacity so we can service both overseas markets, but also for growing volumes here in Australia.”

It is part of O’Brien’s vision to invest $300m in Australia over the  next five years to underpin the export of locally made healthy snacking products from local factories into the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

But he wants to do it in a sustainable way.  

In September, in a world first for Cadbury, Mondelez revealed it was sourcing recycled plastic in Australia to wrap Cadbury Dairy Milk family blocks. The firm has now done the same in the UK.

A subsidiary of packaging giant Amcor agreed to source recycled plastic equivalent to 30 per cent of the plastic needed to wrap single blocks made at the Cadbury factory in Hobart.

The new packaging will be on shelf in Australia from September next year.

“My 16-year-old daughter will happily say to me at dinner, ‘So are you still stuffing up the world? Are you doing something about that?’,” O’Brien says.

“So this is important to me. We see a lot of companies and leaders in companies make these ambitious pledges. And they’re always five, 10, 20 years out. This was one that we announced for next year.”

Last year Mondelez also partnered with a range of businesses across Victoria to establish a power purchase agreement to source renewable energy for two of its factories from the Yaloak South Wind Farm.

More recently, this wind power was extended to all the firm’s local manufacturing, which has reduced emissions by 83 per cent.

Now O’Brien wants to introduce more recycled packaging across the Cadbury range and into other Mondelez products produced locally.

“It’s only limited to being able to source the recycled resin,” he says. “So I will probably continue to take Cadbury further up the scale. I think, ultimately, the ambition is to get to 100 per cent (recycled packaging). There’s no reason not to get there. I’d go as far and as fast as I can, because the more scale you get, the more economical it is.”

The Cadbury brand celebrates its 100th anniversary in Australia next year and O’Brien says there will be 12 different celebrations over the course of the year picking significant events in the brand’s local history over the past century for its packaging.

Cadbury this year replaced Qantas as the sponsor of the Australian Wallabies rugby union team, a deal which O’Brien says has exceeded expectations, driven  by the improved on-field performance of the team.

He now wants the three-Test series against England in Australia next year to be played for the John Cadbury Cup.

“My vision would be that whoever loses has to put a significant amount of money into community rugby in the other country. Just to put a bit of spice into the competition,” he says.

O’Brien’s passion for rugby union in his youth led him to become a referee. He has now officiated in more than 300 senior competition games – including international matches – in Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy and Switzerland over the past 25 years.

“The similarities between the skills that you use in business life and what you do as a referee are fascinating,” he says.

For example, he says, good referees facilitate games, they don’t arbitrate.

“They let the players showcase their skill. They are decisive when required and know also when to make ‘non decisions’ because there is no material impact,” he says. “They communicate well and have a presence – at times strong and at other times subtle. They always focus on getting the big decisions right and know how to handle pressure and use it to keep them sharp and focused, not intimidated.”

After his long career with Mondelez, the now 52-year-old O’Brien says he still harbours ambitions to run a sharemarketlisted company in his home country.

The role would not need to be in the food sector.

“I want to be a CEO of a publicly listed company … as opposed to reporting into a regional presence,” he says, because of “the leadership skills that I have, the ability to communicate and so on, the bigger position you have, the more influence and change you can make”.

“One of my mentors once said to me, ‘When you’re lying on your death bed, no one’s going to be saying how many quarters of growth and profit you delivered in a row.

There’ll be much bigger things that you will hopefully have influenced and done’. That’s certainly what I aspire to do.”

Three of those mentors for the past two decades have been Arnotts Australia CEO and former Kraft global executive George Zoghbi, former Bega Cheese chief executive Aidan Coleman and leading investment banker David Williams, who advised Mondelez on the Gourmet Foods acquisition.

“I can pick up the phone to David any time and he will take my call, give me advice and give it to me unvarnished. That is so refreshing.

He has saved me from making some decisions I may have regretted with blunt transparency,’’ O’Brien says.

“With George and Aidan, it is great to have people with such perspectives you can pick up the phone to and it is not always about work.”

The four men came together for a very special lunch at the Le Plonc French Restaurant in the ritzy Melbourne suburb of Armidale in December 2019 in honour of O’Brien, who the following January celebrated his 50th birthday.

But the real guest of honour that day was his father Paul, who was still fighting on after being given his death sentence two months earlier.

By his side was his second wife and Darren’s stepmother, Judi, who received an Order of Australia award two years ago for her work in cancer charities. For decades she was a senior executive in the advertising industry at Saatchi and Saatchi, J Walter Thompson and Young and Rubicon.

She helped teach her stepson the sales and marketing skills that have underpinned his career.

Williams, Zoghbi and Coleman all left Le Plonc that day knowing it would probably be the last time they would share a meal with Paul O’Brien.

In the weeks that followed, they were all surprised to receive numerous handwritten letters from him thanking them for the day and the 20 years they had known and helped his son in business.

“In some ways it was him passing the baton because he said ‘You guys are such great mentors for Darren. I feel like my son is in safe hands’,” Williams now recalls.

Paul celebrated his 81st birthday on March 13 last year.

His son, who had returned to Switzerland for work over the summer months, planned a short trip back home to Sydney for the occasion to surprise his father.

But on the day before he flew out of Zurich, Paul had what would be his final turn.

O’Brien junior flew into Sydney and was driven straight to a hospital in Moss Vale. There the family patriarch lay unconscious with his wife by his side. For the final hours of his life, the son held his father’s hand.

“He was determined in his own mind that he was going to make it through his birthday. Sure enough, he did. He passed away at about two o’clock in the morning on the 14th,” O’Brien says slowly.

“I know he knew I was there. To be there when he left, it’s a horrible thing. I don’t ever want to do it again. But it was special to be there for him the way he’d been there for me for the previous 51 years.”  

‘For me the concept of being able to take crackers made in Dandenong to the US is amazing’ DARREN O’BRIEN MONDELEZ ASIA-PACIFIC PRESIDENT