Garry Stock

In Memoriam: JR/Duty Free Chairman Garry Stock (Updated)
by Dermot Davitt | 6 December 2024 | dermot@moodiedavittreport.com

With immense sadness we report the passing of JR/Duty Free Chairman Garry Stock, a hugely influential and respected figure in the travel retail industry. He passed last night aged 84 following a long illness.

Garry played a vital role in the rise of Melbourne-based JR/Duty Free to become a regional travel retail powerhouse, as well as guiding its growth at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport, where the company was the lead travel retailer for over three decades, and in latter years through the JR-Heinemann partnership (from 2017).

Gebr. Heinemann Co-CEO Raoul Spanger said: “Garry and I have worked very closely together since the beginning of our partnership with the Danos family in Tel Aviv. He was a true gentleman, smart, kind and a strategic mastermind.

”Garry has guided our company through difficult times. He was a close friend to me. I will miss him very much and never forget him.”

The Moodie Davitt Report joins the travel retail community in expressing our deepest condolences to Garry’s wife Nitsa and his extended family.

Footnote: I am very saddened by Garry Stock’s passing, writes Martin Moodie. We knew each other over several decades, tracing right back to my editorship of Duty-Free News International in the 1990s. From that time, but more especially from when I created The Moodie Report (as it was then known) he has been a close confidante and mentor (especially on both occasions, once in 2011 for health reasons, that I divested the business).

We shared a common foe, in the wretched form of cancer, both defeating it while cheered on by the other. But in August this year, Garry wrote to me saying that his Hodgkins was back “and full on”. He was undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy, he noted, adding with his eternal fusion of resilience and optimism: “but improving”.

Garry had advised me wisely in confidence over several months on how to approach what turned out to be our company’s sale this September to Mark Allen Group. When I told him the divestment had been completed, he wrote back: “Thrilled to read that the deal is done. Mazaltov [congratulations] to you and Dermot.

“Now please start focusing on your life after and the things you can do with those you love alongside a more normal executive role. We love you mate.” – Nitsa and Garry

Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, Dayan HaEmet.