Head of Manufacturing

Location: South-East England (relocation available)

Salary: £90-110,000 + great benefits and career opportunities

With our Client you can make an impact on the world around you and accelerate your career in areas that energise and excite you. We are seeking a motivated and experienced Site Leader – Manufacturing (Industrial) with true ambition and potential. You will have an impressive career trajectory so far and will be keen to join an organisation that can continue to shape your future.

As a key leader within their organisation, you will drive operational excellence, optimise supply chain performance, and enhance service capabilities across two sites. This role is a unique opportunity to shape and elevate their production and engineering strategies and execution, ensuring safety, quality, efficiency, and scalability as they both continue to grow and reshape their offering for the future.

You will be responsible for the overall strategic coordination, direction, implementation, and execution of operations across both sites inclusive of all production, engineering, project management, technical, health and safety and supply chain.

What you’ll do:

• Build & Lead a High-Performing Team – Develop and inspire a best-in-class leadership team across both sites. Cultivate a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Optimise Operations – Ensure the right talent is in place and that processes align with the business objectives. Champion a high-performance attitude, driving operational excellence across all functions.
• Cultural change – responsibility for taking the site through a complete cultural change creating outstanding expectations for communication on site.
• Deliver Key Business Results – Drive the achievement of annual financial, operational, and safety goals, ensuring cost efficiency and risk mitigation.
• Strategically Manage Third-Party Partnerships – Lead the identification, contracting, auditing, and performance management of third-party providers. Ensure these partnerships deliver on safety, service, and cost objectives while enhancing overall supply chain capabilities.
• Oversee Execution – Take ownership of daily operations, to ensure seamless execution and service excellence.
• Shape the Future of the broader organisation – Contribute to the ongoing strategy and development of the group organisation. Play a key role in scaling capabilities to support business growth, new supplier integration, and product expansion.
• Site Transformation – Identify areas for change, create the strategy and deliver the change programmes that will raise the bar.
• Provide leadership and direction to site management and teams, fostering a culture of accountability, teamwork, and continuous improvement.
• Develop and execute strategic and annual plans to align with the organisations vision, tracking progress and ensuring measurable results.
• Identify and implement best practices for preventive maintenance, safety, unit turn overs, timely completion of work orders, and operational efficiency.
• Lead renovation and capital improvement projects, enhancing the sites.
• Evaluate and manage vendor contracts, ensuring cost-effective and high-quality service delivery.
• Prepare, manage, and forecast operational and capital budgets, ensuring responsible cost control, inventory management, and financial accountability.
• Promote a safety-first culture, ensuring team members understand and adhere to workplace safety regulations.
• Ownership of site audits.

The person:

• Degree educated as a minimum, with a strong progressive leadership background in operations, manufacturing, and engineering within an industrial, chemical or hazardous goods environment. If you also have experience of manufacturing leadership in FMCG this would be an advantage.
• Must have ambition and potential and in the future be globally mobile to ensure we are creating a future potential pipeline.
• Proven track record of building, leading, and inspiring complex teams while balancing operational execution with strategic business objectives.
• Experience of facilitating cultural change and raising standards.
• Successful site transformation experience from design to delivery.
• Deep understanding of supply chain profitability drivers and how to optimise safety, service, cost and quality to drive business success.
• Skilled at navigating complex environments, influencing at all levels (up, down, and across), and aligning teams around key priorities.
• Develops and retains top talent through coaching, feedback, and strategic growth opportunities to create a high-performing team.
• Thrives in fast-paced environments, anticipating challenges and adapting strategies to deliver results. Capable of managing sensitive issues with discretion and foresight.
• Experience of driving the site audit programme and step changing the expectation for results and standards.

To apply please email your CV to or call 0115 870 0115.