CANTERBURY-BASED family firm A Salvatori and Son has two new directors, including the first from outside the family.

Daniel Salvatori, chief executive and chairman of the apples to warehousing and pallet distribution business, is now in his forties and decided he needed some support at the top. He has appointed David Tobin as financial director and promoted company secretary Melissa Salvatori to the board.

Mr Tobin, who was brought up and educated in South Africa, is the first person outside the Salvatori family to become a director. He is a chartered accountant and has specialised in mergers and acquisitions for Lazard Brothers in Milan, Italy. His wife is a pharmacist with Pfizer at Sandwich.

Melissa, 25, is Mr Salvatori's eldest daughter and former pupil of St Edmunds Canterbury and Benenden girls school. She has worked in the company since leaving full time education. She has worked in all areas of the business but now has complete responsibility for the haulage and distribution arm.

The Salvatori family has been trading in Canterbury since the 1920s. Over the years the company has diversified and re-modelled to keep up with the ever-changing trends of their business. Daniel joined his father Tony from school in 1969 to help run the fruit and pig farming business.

When pig farming faced difficulties, the company switched its main attention to fruit trading, soon becoming the leading suppliers of apples to the processing industry, including Copella, a subsidiary of American giant Pepsico.

Nine years ago, the company moved to Preston, near Canterbury. It recently transferred some of its heavy haulage business, including 14 articulated trucks, to a local company, leaving Salvatori to concentrate on pallet and local distribution.