Head of Operations

Job Title: Head of Operations - FMCG/Produce

Location: St Mary Bourne, Andover, Hampshire

Working Pattern: Monday to Friday, 40 hours

Predominantly Site Based, some travel to other Vitacress sites (including farms)

Are you a strategic leader ready to drive operational excellence? Can you inspire teams through role-modelling positive behaviours to achieve an outstanding quality product whilst optimising costs?

As our Head of Operations, you will be responsible for leading and managing the Production, Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP), Hygiene, and Distribution & Logistics departments, reporting to the Managing Director. As you would expect your focus will be to deliver the best possible product quality, on time and in full, while keeping production costs to a minimum and meeting budgeted wastage targets.

But this position requires an individual with your exceptional leadership skills, as you will inspire and guide our team towards achieving customer service excellence, cost efficiency, and continuous improvement. With your own style, you will develop positive and engaging behaviours in line with our own values and ensure all colleagues are aware of the high-quality work they do in support of our customers.

You’ll be at the heart of driving our supply chain strategy, ensuring that we maintain the highest standards of Health and Safety, Food Safety, and operational efficiency.

You will lead the production facility, with support from a seasoned team, giving a focus on effective labour utilisation, waste reduction, and continuous improvement to ensure we always deliver quality. You will enjoy being a customer facing senior leader, and in overseeing S&OP, you will manage customer orders, factory scheduling, and master data production to streamline operations.

We are a truly field to fork operation so your passion for our product completing that journey is key. Driving logistics excellence will be essential, as you ensure cost-effective logistics from our warehouse to the depot, utilizing our own fleet.

Your passion for market-leading customer service levels through strategic planning and operational excellence. You will embed a culture of Health and Food Safety across all activities, ensuring we do the right thing to support our overall business objectives.

Your focus on LEAN and KAIZEN will nurture the future of our operation, encouraging innovation and operational efficiencies. You will build and develop a high-performing team capable of delivering category leading results and sustaining a positive, sustained growth of this business unit.

At Vitacress Salads, we have invested heavily in our factory operations. Our processes have been focused on utilising technological advances in washing and pack lines, enabling us to achieve record growth in high quality final product. Our prestige Watercress is a true field to fork product and represents our heritage spanning 80 years of growing at our St. Mary Bourne site. Combine this with our supply chains in the UK, Spain and Portugal our on-label products are of the highest quality.

If you're a results-driven leader with a passion for operations and a people centric approach, we’d love to hear from you. Please submit your CV or reach out Simon Dickinson our Head of Talent Acquisition with any questions.

Join Vitacress and help us drive excellence in operations, innovation, and customer service!