Charles Nelson is an Agritech Principle Advisor at Larta Institute; in this capacity, Charles provides one-on-one business mentoring to the innovative companies that participate in the Larta-managed USDA Commercialization Assistance Training Program (USDA-CATP). Nelson has been part of the Larta team since 2008.

Charles Nelson runs his own consulting business primarily advising Australasian export companies that are looking to penetrate the U.S. market and require assistance in navigating Government regulations, import tariffs and quotas, shipping options and costs, and port, customs and brokerage options and costs. Charles advises companies on domestic warehousing and distributions options and best cost scenarios, and has over 10 years of experience in selling to U.S. retailers and restaurant chains. He also has an extensive network to tap into for product pitches to most national retailers and can assist companies importing or domestically based to achieve their desired sales objectives.

Charles originally came from an agricultural background in New Zealand where his family owned and farmed a 3500 acre sheep, cattle and deer property with over 7,500 animals, so agriculture and getting products from pasture to plate is part of his DNA. He graduated with a bachelor of commerce in agriculture and marketing from Lincoln University in New Zealand in 1989. For the past 15 years, he has worked in various positions in New Zealand and the U.S., commodity trading, selling, and establishing retail marketing programs for branded consumer food products, both on the grocery aisle shelf (fast moving consumer goods) and the fresh perishable counter.

One of Charles's key achievements was to establish a national private label lamb program that imported over 6.5 million pounds of lamb annually for Safeway. Because of the unique characteristics of this program, Charles forecasted and planned Safeway's lamb requirements to over 1900 stores in the U.S. and Canada and managed their promotion slots and forecasted ad and everyday pulls to ensure no out of stocks. Charles also analyzed the financial data to provide reports back to Safeway on performance critical areas such as product shrink, margin, year on year sales and profitability comparisons, and forward projections based on supply and demand considerations. Because of Safeway's requirement for value added products that were manufactured domestically, Charles has had significant exposure to manufacturing and production lines, fixed and variable costing associated with those lines and P&L reports plus yield and throughput analysis.

Charles's experience with managing imported product programs over vast international distance with national retailers gives him a unique skill set required to anticipate the issues and have the forecasting tools needed to run a successful program that both the importer and retailer view as a profitable partnership. Charles's network in New Zealand, Australia and the U.S. allows him to bring together prospective partners to establish successful retail and foodservice chain programs. Recently Charles has completed a project that rolled out a consumer branded ready to eat meal (RTE meals) with Whole Foods that required the establishment of a comprehensive import, USDA and FDA clearance, warehousing, distribution and marketing program with Whole Foods. Charles was responsible for establishing the in-market presence for the New Zealand based company and liaison with the USDA and FDA to acquire necessary food certification and label approval. He also organized and monitored store sampling programs and in-store promotional programs that required temporary price reductions or end cap displays during the initial roll-out period.