Alix Rimington, formerly head of corporate venture capital unit Amatil X, has been appointed as chief of staff of Australian retail company Woolworths Group.

Rimington will maintain her roles as general manager of global strategic alliances and innovation, and chair of the innovation committee at Woolworths. The firm hired her in March 2021 as general manager of strategic partnerships, a role she held for two years.

Her entry to corporate venturing came in 2020 when she co-founded Amatil X, the CVC arm of Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, the Australia-based bottler then known as Coca-Cola Amatil. The unit last disclosed an investment in September of that year, when it backed Indonesian cloud kitchen management platform Yummy.

In April 2024, Woolworths entered into a partnership with four other large global retailers Tesco, Ahold Delhaize, Empire and Shoprite to set up the W23 Global fund, targeting startups in sectors including supply chain, sustainable packaging and agricultural biodiversity.

Each corporate contributed a fifth of the $125m fund. It has most recently participated in a A$5.3m ($3.5m) seed round for biosecurity risk management app developer ExoFlare last month.