Craig McDermid steps aside as CEO

April saw a big change for the McDermid Auto Collective, with Craig McDermid stepping aside as group CEO.

The McDermid Auto Collective began in 1990 when Craig and Kathie McDermid moved their young family from Christchurch, where they owned a Shell service station, to Marlborough - becoming co-owners of Blenheim Toyota. Shortly thereafter the they bought the franchise in full and began expanding into the South island, acquiring South Canterbury Toyota in Timaru in 2008 and Rangiora, Kaiapoi and Ashburton dealerships in 2015.

During Craig’s tenure, the dealerships have been winners at the Toyota Business Excellence Awards nine times, most recently winning the Toyota Supreme and Parts Excellence awards in 2020 and the Service Excellence award in 2021.

Craig is not retiring, rather he is stepping aside from the day-to-day responsibilities of the dealerships but will still be an integral part of the McDermid Auto Collective, being involved in many current and new business projects. 

Scott McDermid has been CEO of Blenheim Toyota for some time already, and has now been appointed as CEO of Rangiora and Kaiapoi Toyota too. Whilst South Canterbury’s branch manager, Mark Patterson, a familiar face to many in Timaru been appointed as the new CEO of South Canterbury Toyota and Ashburton Toyota.

While there might be a little less seen of Craig day-to-day at our businesses, Mark and Scott have both held roles in the company for many years and share the vision of striving towards delivering exceptional and personalised service and experiences to our customers – so from your perspective we hope it remains business as usual!

Feel free to reach out to Scott or Mark and the many friendly, knowledgeable and talented people you already know at our dealerships. 

If you would like to contact any of our teams, simply click on the images below