Senior Raw Materials Planner

As we continue our mission to make people and nature happy through re-inventing chocolate, we are looking for a Senior Raw Materials Planner to join our Materials Management Team on a permanent basis. As Senior Raw Materials Planner, you will be at the heart of our operations, responsible for shaping and delivering the material plan to meet the evolving needs of the business.

You will lead and engage a team of Material Planners to achieve 100% availability, optimise inventory and ensure a supply base that consistently delivers on time and in full. Collaborating closely with our supply partners and internal teams, you will ensure forecasts are shared early and effectively so that the forward plan can be delivered with confidence, proactively identifying and mitigating any risks before they impact performance.

This is a great opportunity to help drive operational excellence, strengthen supplier collaboration and to make tangible impacts across the business.

As well as a competitive salary and a range of company benefits including private healthcare cover, enhanced maternity and paternity leave and Company pension contributions, you will receive 50% discount on all products, and a 70% discount for you and your guests when you stay at our Rabot Estate hideaway on the paradise island of Saint Lucia.

Here at Hotel Chocolat, we have adopted hybrid working. This means you will join us on site for three days a week, and for the other two days – you can work from wherever you like! The onsite location for this role is at our Factory 'Hadley Park', in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, right in the heart of where our chocolates are made and where weekly, we can produce between 4 to 6 million of the chocolates we all know and love. This role may also include occasional travel to our Distribution Centres, 'Alpha', in St. Neots and 'Beta', in Northampton.

What you will be doing...

• Lead the Operational Materials Team, implementing a future fit structure, focused on colleague development, engagement, and training plans.
• Line manages team members to successfully optimise material availability and minimise stock risk.
• Ensuring consistently high performance from all team members through coaching and development and supporting them in any performance challenges as appropriate.
• Lead and develop the team of material planners, setting high expectations of delivering a world-class function, challenging them to identify opportunities at every turn.
• Champion the team's requirements in cross-functional projects where needed.
• Implement the team and business strategy to align with HC Business & People Shapers.
• Present operational/inventory performance summaries with improvement plans.
• Own the continuous improvement of operational material metrics.
• Through a pro-active, forward thinking, and collaborative approach improve supplier performance.
• Ensure material forecasts are sent to the supply base, so they are set up to deliver the forward plan before purchase orders are committed.
• Agree growth assumptions with the Merchandising and Demand Planning teams to build a forward forecast of demand and monitor its accuracy against committed orders/contract balances and review these periodically to drive continuous improvement and identify strategic purchases.
• Ensure the seasonal and new product intake plans align with supplier lead times and coordinate this with the Demand Planning & Projects teams, including the delivery of artworks.
• Manage obsolescence risks. Create visibility to key stakeholders and drive an action plan to minimise the value, ensure any true redundant stocks are disposed of as soon as possible.
• Use inventory optimisation methodologies and maintain inventory policies at SKU level that consider production demand, seasonality, minimum order quantities, lead-times, and shelf life.
• Liaise closely with procurement and technical teams to challenge current procurement/operational parameters.
• Forecast inbound pallet quantities and in collaboration with the warehouse teams ensure we have capacity to receipt stock.
• Own all Materials Master Data and ensure this is maintained in any systems.

Who you are?

• Experience in supplier management with a proven record of improving supplier performance.
• Considerable experience of inventory management ideally in a fast-moving FMCG multi-channel retailer.
• Excellent analytical, problem solving and organisational skills, with a high level of maths/numeracy skills.
• Microsoft Office - advanced Excel skills essential and must also be proficient in Word and PowerPoint.
• Proven experience with leading, mentoring and developing teams.
• Continuous improvement experience.
• Demonstratable experience of optimising inventory levels.
• Integrated systems experience.

Who are we?

We are one of the UK's favourite premium chocolate brands, with a range of products spanning luxury gifts, alcohol and our pioneering drinking chocolate system, the VelvetiserTM. A cacao pod takes years to grow – it can't be rushed if it's going to be just right for our products. The same can be said for Hotel Chocolat, which originally started as a mint production company before we realised it was luxury chocolate that we were really passionate about. Now, we are market leaders in the industry. What began as an online-only business grew to over 140 stores across the UK, and we are still growing... Today, we are multi-category, multi-channel, and multi-territory, and our customers, colleagues, cacao farmers and suppliers all benefit from the success we make together.