In this critical role, you will make a significant contribution to taking the site forward, driving forward the quality agenda, leading new product implementation improvements, and maintaining and improving audit results. You will be part of the strong site leadership team, reporting to the General Manager, leading, coaching, developing, the site quality team of approximately 15 colleagues (covering Implementations / Laboratory /Factory Quality).

In addition, you will be a senior member of the Refresco UK technical team with a dotted reporting line in to our Head of Technical for Refresco UK, contributing to strategic plans and developments, and in time covering for the Head of Technical when required.

Senior Site Quality Manager

Refresco, Bridgwater, Somerset (just off J23 of the M5)

Competitive salary, car allowance and benefits, annual bonus and company pension scheme

Refresco the world's largest independent soft drinks manufacturer seeks a dynamic, energetic Senior Site Quality Manager for our large, modern, soft drinks factory at Bridgwater, Somerset (just off J23 of the M5).

Refresco Bridgwater is one of the largest and most modern, food & drinks manufacturing sites globally -  158,000 square metres, 4 factories, a large warehouse and transport facility under one roof, some of the latest, leading edge engineering technology enabling us to produce 800 million litres per annum of soft drinks for our many own label and contract manufacturing customers from 26 production lines. We also have ongoing investment in many CAPEX engineering projects.

Find out more about our site at Bridgwater by viewing this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BtFzV68xco

About the Role

As Senior Site Quality Manager you will act as role model for all colleagues for the implementation of our quality agenda at Bridgwater, responsible for the delivery and improvement of site technical and quality performance matrices and standards, complying with legal, group and customer requirements and working closely with the site team to ensure that all aspects are performed in line with standards.

We require a senior, experienced Quality / Technical individual due to the sheer size and scale of the Refresco Bridgwater site.

Key responsibilities

Ensure the site is safe, legally compliant, meeting all internal and external standards including delivering excellent audit results from a food safety perspective.

• Lead your site quality team, developing, coaching, and empowering to take them from 'good to great'.
• Leading the site quality agenda, engaging all colleagues in quality, increasing their knowledge of processes and best practice.
• Ensure your team work in close collaboration with the central Product Development team.
• Act as the lead and 'guardian' of BRC, HACCP, auditing, product launch and retailer codes of practice.
• Building great relationships and communication with external customer food technical and quality teams.
• Ensure due diligence can be demonstrated to satisfy the requirements of external agencies.
• Effective value engineering implementation via active change control and operational support on technical matters and innovative technologies.
• Reporting internal Refresco KPIs to the site management team.
• Ensure quality monitoring and testing systems including micro and food safety are in place.
• Lead the site customer complaints process.
• Leading the product/packaging implementation technologists and operational teams to ensure that the launch and trial of new products is completed in a timely manner, meeting food safety, legal and customer requirements and that process changes are evaluated, risk assessed, validated and documented.

About You

• You will need to be a strong leader within a technical manager or Quality manager role.
• You will need experience of leading and developing a factory quality team communicating a clear vision, via coaching and empowering your team.
• You will need to be a strong communicator at all levels including being able to present information and transfer information articulately at a senior level.
• You will need FMCG industry sector experience preferably in food and / or drink (dairy liquid processing experience would be excellent!) in which you have become familiar with factory operations.
• A degree in a Science or Food Technology is preferred or 5+ years industry experience in a similar technical/quality role.
• In depth knowledge of BRC and HACCP standards and plenty if experience of internal and external audits.
• You will need to be fully familiar with modern manufacturing methodologies, and show that you have delivered new product implementations and have a successful internal / external customer audit record.
• You will have experience and feel comfortable in a fast moving, fast changing 24/7 manufacturing environment with many SKU's, new product implementations and new automated engineering equipment.
• You have high professional standards, work collaboratively with colleagues, you are a good communicator at all levels, and you have excellent attention to detail with top analytical skills.

At Refresco we really believe that our values have helped and will continue to help us be successful. Our values are - agile, excellence, responsible, passionate and entrepreneurship - open this link for more details - https://www.refresco.co.uk/uk/about/our-values

About Refresco

Our drinks on every table. That's the Refresco vision. We're passionate about producing tasty, refreshing drinks and we’re thirsty for more and growing fast. We’re a global business and invested £1.25 billion in expanding our manufacturing footprint to make us the largest independent bottler of soft drinks and fruit juices in the world. We currently produce 14 billion litres from over 78 manufacturing plants in Europe, North America and Australia and we’re only just getting started…

Our UK Business has six manufacturing plants providing a great place to work for 1800 employees producing private label soft drinks and fruit juices for all the leading retailers including Tesco, ASDA, Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s, ALDI and Lidl. We also manufacture for branded customers such as Monster, Lucozade, Ocean Spray, Weetabix, Del Monte and Um Bongo. Whether it’s packed in cartons, bottles or cans, we ensure that our products are made to the highest quality standards but they get where they need to be when they need to get there to meet the needs of our high profile customers.

Refresco passionately believe in fairness and consistency for all throughout our entire recruitment process.

#LI-GK1 Quality Manager – Technical Manager