Technical Services Manager in Chippenham

Role: Technical Services Manager Packing Centre

Salary: £55,000 - £58,000

Location: Lacock, Wiltshire

Working Hours: Monday Friday, 40 hours.

Stonegate Farmers are seeking a Technical Services Manager to join our Packing Centre based at our facility in Lacock, Wiltshire. As our Technical Services Manager, you will reporting into our Group Technical Services Manager whilst having overall responsibility for the technical services function within our Packing Centre. You will ensure that product meets all necessary legislative and agreed customer standards and best practice industry guidance with regard to raw materials and supply chain, and food safety through a robust quality management and risk assessment approach.

About Stonegate Farmers Ltd

Stonegate Farmers Ltd is an integrated free range and organic egg business organised across three divisions comprising farming and agriculture, egg packing and cooked egg processing. Established in 1926 and under new ownership since 2016, we have grown into one the largest free-range and organic egg producers within the UK.

Moving millions of mother natures most fragile food items every day takes finesse and know how. We work closely with our producers to collect, grade and package each individual egg. So many fresh eggs requires fresh thinking therefore we only employ the most enthusiastic people for our operations, who have hearts of gold just like our eggs!

We deliver daily from hen houses right across the country to the most exclusive restaurants and to many of the UKs leading supermarkets, together with first class egg products to some of the biggest names in food manufacturing.

Role & Responsibilities:

• Manage and maintain the supplier and raw material approval system within the Packing Centre; ensuring these are current and accurate at all times. This includes packaging, purchased graded shell egg and service suppliers
• Manage and maintain the end-to-end specification management systems for packing centre (raw materials, factory specs, finished products and QAS) ensuring timescales are met and specifications are completed accurately and consistency at all times
• Manage Packing Centre customer technical site visits, reviews and meetings; working collaboratively with QA, Technical and PC management and Commercial teams
• Complete and submit PC customer SAQs and questionnaires,
• Manage customer complaints and B2B complaints / rejection database forensuring that serious complaints, rejections, complaint trends and complaint spikesare allocated to the right members of the PC team for investigation ensuring these and subsequent corrective actions are taken
• Play an active role in 2nd & 3rd party audits
• Ensure that new customer COPs and standards relevant to PC are subject to a full documented gap analysis and that non-conformances arising from the gap analysis are agreed by the owner, timebound and verified as complete.
• Carry out internal audits as instructed by the Group Technical Systems Manager.
• Manage the product recall test and challenge program within PC, ensure thesetests are completed to meet customer and third party requirements
• Manage and approve the new equipment change management process, working collaboratively with Engineering, NPD, Hygiene, EIC Technical, Operations, H&S and IT
• To contribute fully to the continuous improvement in business performance as a member of the PC and wider Technical Management team
• Continuous support developing the food safety and quality culture across the business

Person Specification:

• Be able to display the company values: Courage, One Team, Respect, Diversity & Aspire
• Proven management and leadership skills
• Able to work under pressure, whilst staying clam and focused
• Good communication skills, being capable to influence across all levels; both internally and externally
• A proven team player and who enjoys being part of a team
• Able work collaboratively
• Self-starter and able to motivate themselves and others

Qualifications / Experience:

• Food science / food technology degree or equivalent
• Food hygiene level 4
• Lead Auditor
• HACCP qualification level 4
• Recognised food labelling qualification
• Minimum 2+ years experience within food manufacturing in technical services management / customer facing role
• Food manufacturing experience preferred but would also consider people from with a food retailer background
• Experience and knowledge of building strong sustainable customer relationships with customer technical teams within the likes of Waitrose, Tesco, M&S and / or Sainsburys

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