Job Details

Ripening Manager

Location: Teynham/Sittingbourne

Permanent Full Time

Salary: £Up to £45,000 DOE

40 hours per week

Benefits - Employee assistance programme, pension, support for CPD, Social events

We are looking for a Ripening manager to control and maintain the flow of product throughout the ripening process on behalf of our client based in Sittingbourne.

Main Responsibilities:

• Ensure that all aspects of product quality, where customer specifications are being compromised are effectively communicated to the Production and Quality teams as well as the Head of Q&T on a timely basis. Providing recommendations as to the action required.

• Provide effective written communication to the business with clear instructions on when and how to use the product so as to minimise any loss.

• Provide current ripe stock quality status, availability, and projected availability to the daily production meeting along with recommendations for varietal usage for all added value lines. This should be depot specific where appropriate.

• Take an active involvement in decision making during the daily production meeting.

• Support the QA teams if required.

• Undertake monthly reviews of the ripening team’s performance against accountabilities, KPI’s and complete their appraisals.

• Provide regular and on-going feedback to customers on quality of ripened product to allow continuous improvement.

• Liaise and communicate on a daily basis any quality issues with Production.

• Communicate with the customers Technical and quality teams’ daily quality issues related to ripening.

• Ensure the customers required quality standards are efficiently and effectively maintained at all times.

• Manage the ripening teams in all sites.

• Ensure through effective planning that we have sufficient ripening capacity to facilitate the delivery of our customer orders.

• Ensure the ripening teams where practical maintain at least two days’ worth of ripened stock at the correct customers spec for all AV lines.

• Ensure the ripening team maintains accurate ripening records.

• Ensure through correct product utilisation and close monitoring of stock levels and quality, that wastage is minimised on all products.

• Ensure that the information on prophet under your control is 100% accurate.

• Ensure that resource planning is managed effectively allowing the business to operate in an efficient manner, but also in the most cost-effective way ensuring costs are maintained within budget.

• Lead the research and implementation of new ripening processes and technologies, while ensuring continuous improvement of existing ones.

Qualifications and Skills:

• Excellent standard of English & Maths
• A Food Safety qualification would be advantageous.
• Experience of managing a team and supporting and developing direct reports
• Demonstrable knowledge of the fresh produce sector
• At least 5 years previous experience of a similar role.

Measure of Performance/Key Deliverables:

• Internal KPI’s
• Achievement of customer service levels
• Efficiency of workload
• Accuracy of work
• Attention to detail.
• Internal relationships with team members

Disclaimer: Due to the high amount of interest that we receive for each of our roles, unfortunately we cannot respond to each application individually, therefore if you do not hear back from one of our consultants within 14 days then unfortunately you have not been shortlisted for this role.

Closing date for applications: October 14, 2023

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