Product Development Manager

at  Greencore Group

WHY GREENCORE

We are a leading manufacturer of convenience food in the UK and our purpose is to make everyday taste better.
We supply all the major supermarkets in the UK. We also supply convenience and travel retail outlets, discounters, coffee shops, foodservice, and other retailers. We have strong market positions in a range of categories including sandwiches, salads, sushi, chilled snacking, chilled ready meals, chilled soups and sauces, chilled quiche, ambient sauces and pickles, and frozen Yorkshire Puddings.
In FY22 we manufactured 795m sandwiches and other food to go products, 127m chilled prepared meals, and 249m bottles of cooking sauces, pickles, and condiments. We carry out more than 10,600 direct to store deliveries each day. We have 21 world-class manufacturing units across 16 locations in the UK, with industry-leading technology and supply chain capabilities. We generated revenues of £1.7bn in FY22 and employ approximately 14,000 people.
We work hard to ensure that Greencore is a great place to work, and our people truly are at the core. We’re committed to ensuring all our colleagues have development plans and strive to provide inspiring leadership – in fact, in the past year we’ve seen an 11% increase in the number of colleagues who would recommend Greencore as a place to work.
Join us and be part of our great team!
We currently have two fixed-term contract openings available at our Northampton location to cover two maternity leaves.

Your role will be to lead customer/category Product Development (PD) activity to achieve Greencore’s great food and commercial targets, deliver right first time launches and act as the customer’s first point of contact.

• Responsible for the project management of all customer /category PD activity to meet the critical path
• Input product knowledge and customer insight within category team to ensure product development is aligned with all key customer requirements and meets financial measurements
• Lead feasibility meetings ensuring that people are kept informed of all activity regularly and ensure actions are completed
• Lead the feasibility meetings ensuring all outputs are deliver to the right standard
• Ensure that technical and quality standards are achieved whilst maximising profitability
• Build and maintain customer relationships acting as the dedicated contact to provide accurate and consistent communication internally and externally whilst identifying and resolving issues promptly
• Develop the team capability through task focused coaching to ensure maximum performance and development to their potential
• Stakeholder management of operational peers to promote collaborative ways of working and delivery of the NPD agenda
• Custodian of product quality, ensuring accurate margin target delivery against the commercial brie

A solid understanding of Product Development within food manufacturing is critical to this role.

• Ideally, you will be educated to degree level with a specialism in Consumer Science or equivalent knowledge gained through on the job training
• Experience of delivering high quality, sustainable, commercial products
• Demonstrable ability to lead multiple projects and prioritise own and others focus accordingly
• Good understanding and experience of food manufacturing principals demonstrated through feasibility of proposals
• An experienced leader with proficient leadership qualities
• Demonstrable customer service values and is well respected by customers as a food authorit