A key focus of this role is to ensure the safety, quality, and legality of high-risk products, including sauces, dressings, cooked rice and pastas, ice creams, sorbets, gelato, mousses, and pickles. This involves maintaining the Quality Manual, ensuring compliance with legislation, customer requirements, and company standards, and managing due diligence and product safety.
Responsibilities include leading site audits, managing production technical requirements, investigating customer complaints, and conducting product testing. The ideal candidate will have experience in high-risk food production, a food science/technology degree, and HACCP level 3 certification.
Key requirements include a clean driver's license, excellent communication skills, and experience dealing with Trading Standards and Environmental Health. The role offers a competitive salary, car allowance, generous holiday allowance, pension scheme, and career progression opportunities.
* Ensure companies compliance with all necessary accreditation, legislation, customer codes of practice/requirements, and Sysco standards.
* Prepare for, organise and lead site audits by customers, BRC, Local and central government agencies or similar bodies and also including Internal Audits – taking the necessary corrective action where required.
* Manage the Production Technical requirements ensuring at all times that product is supplied to the necessary specifications and meets customer, legislative & industry requirements.
* Log, investigate and follow up on all customer complaints and resolve internally/externally as required. Implement trend analysis into customer complaint analysis to identify re-occurring issues and put in place corrective action strategies as a result.
* Ensure regular product shelf life/surveillance testing is carried out and conduct all product trials, organoleptic and microbiological testing.
* To ensure all the company's suppliers are brought into the business in a controlled manner and officially audited or assessed on a predetermined basis, to include all food and non-food lines.
* Management of raw material/product specifications and relevant databases.
* To control and manage the regular review of the Company Quality Management Systems, to include all work processes and procedures, HACCP/Allergen management and all accreditation requirements, and any customer specific requirements.
* Manage the site Quality team.
* Establish and manage policies relating to due diligence, product safety and integrity ensuring internal and external (supplier) compliance.
* Manage GMP and hygiene quality within the production environment including the monitoring of cleaning efficacy through a predetermined micro testing & audit schedule.
* Manage site pest control.
* Drive continuous technical improvement throughout.