Animal Nutritionist

at  Pets Choice

Categories: NPD & Innovation
Location: Blackburn
Type: Full Time
Setup: Hybrid
Schedule: Monday to Friday
Hours: 8:30am-4:30pm

POSITION OVERVIEW

The Animal Nutritionist will play a critical role supporting the business in developing new and existing nutritionally balanced pet food products. Collaborating with cross functional teams such as NPD & Innovation, Marketing, Sales, Technical and Quality Assurance to ensure our products are not only nutritionally complete but also appealing and safe for pets.

KEY ATTRIBUTES AND SKILLS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Animal Nutrition
• Proven track record of developing and launching successful pet food products
• Deep understanding of animal physiology, nutritional needs and ingredient functionalities
• Analytical and research skills
• Excellent communication and presentation skills
• Ability to be self-sufficient as well as work collaboratively with teams

• Technical & NPD
• Creating technical dossiers to support existing and new marketing claims across the Pets Choice range of products.
• Conduct research and present key pet nutritional and health trends/concerns into the development and marketing teams.
• Manage nutritional testing and any recipe modifications of Pets Choice complete and balanced products to ensure nutritional and regulatory compliance.
• Build good relationships with ingredient suppliers.
• Provide insight on innovative ingredients with potential nutritional and health benefits for pets and recommendations for NPD opportunities.
• Formulate recipes and conduct production trials for NPD/EPD projects.
• Look for opportunities to conduct ‘clinical’ trials to support product/ingredient claims.
• Assist with understanding FEDIAF, VMD and ASA labelling claims – and PARNUTS for any medicinal claims.
• Create tailored nutritional feeding plans for to support weight loss for dogs.
• Marketing
• Support in the creation of social media and communications guidelines for all brands, providing advice on product claims and Q&A’s.
• Researching, writing and editing nutritional blogs, articles and assisting with press releases.
• Provide input and approve pack copy documents and artworks from nutritional and labelling compliance.
• Attend events, trade shows, exhibitions, or trend seminars and present back findings.
• Lead change projects if nutritional changes are required.
• Collate changes to packaging to ensure ongoing packs remain compliant.
• Audit our products recipes and pack communications against competitors and contribute to sell in materials.
• Sales
• Provide training and education for staff and additional training for trade customers/vets
• Presenting at conferences/events where required
• Provide nutritional support to consumers as our in-house nutritionist via email, social media or telephone
• Assist the Customer Service team with queries relating to Shopify, subscriptions, product enquiries and complaints / concerns
• Assist with quality control queries
• Provide support for complaints relating to digestive problems to establish if there is a nutritional reason.