Supply Partnerships Manager in Preston

Reporting to the Head of Quality & NPD, the Supplier Partnerships Manager is responsible for building and managing strategic relationships with suppliers of key raw materials, including proteins, grains, vitamins, minerals, functional ingredients, additives and packaging materials alongside 3rd party manufacturers. This role ensures that our raw materials and outsourced finished goods meet the company’s nutritional, safety, regulatory and sustainability standards.

The Supplier Partnerships Manager oversees supplier performance across quality, service and feed safety. They play a key role in long-term planning, new product development ingredient sourcing and risk mitigation. This position requires a strong understanding of the pet food industry’s regulatory environment, raw material markets and animal nutrition needs. The Supplier Partnerships Manager drives continuous improvement with suppliers, identifies opportunities for innovation and works in close collaboration with the Purchasing team to ensure the company maintains a competitive and resilient raw material supply chain whilst maintaining quality, nutritional and feed safety standards.

Role responsibilities include:

• Develop and maintain long-term partnerships with raw material suppliers, including meat and poultry suppliers, agricultural producers, premix and blend manufacturers and specialty ingredient vendors.
• Maintain regular communication with all raw material suppliers, including supplier visits, on-line meetings and supplier audits (based on risk assessment) to include producing detailed and concise contact reports after all meetings with clear documented action plans.
• Conduct business reviews, performance evaluations and collaborative improvement initiatives.
• Ensure alignment of supplier capabilities with production needs and product innovation goals.
• Identify savings opportunities, alternative ingredient strategies and supply optimization whilst assessing quality, feed safety, nutritional and operational impact of changes.
• Monitor and track supplier performance on quality, service, on-time delivery and feed safety metrics.
• Work with suppliers to conduct root cause analysis of raw material quality issues and agree plans to prevent re-occurrences. Ensure non-conformances are closed out effectively and on-time.
• Benchmark suppliers’ standards and identify opportunities to improve.
• Partner with Quality, Nutritional and Feed Safety teams to ensure compliance with all relevant regulatory and internal safety standards. Enhance internal cross-functional working relationships to maintain high quality standards of the raw materials and products we purchase.
• Manage corrective action plans and lead and conduct supplier audits when required.
• Work with the Product Development team on ingredient qualification, formulation changes and sourcing for new product development.
• Align on responsible sourcing and environmental initiatives.
• Identify supply risks and work with the Product Development, Operations, Planning and Purchasing teams to develop mitigation strategies.
• Work in partnership with the Planning team to identify production risks, manage non-conformances and implement effective changes to manage and mitigate disruptions to service.
• Support crisis management during supply disruptions.
• Maintain accurate and up-to-date approvals, supplier certifications, relevant specifications and supplier qualification, including audits, risk assessments and ongoing monitoring. Verify that suppliers provide required documentation such as COAs, SDS and feed safety certifications.
• Identify opportunities to improve raw material specifications and supplier quality checks to enhance feed safety and quality.
• Training and development of Pets Choice colleagues on raw material quality criteria, with regular feedback, supplier visits and coaching to improve performance and enhance the understanding of the raw materials we use and the supply chain as required.
• Overall responsibility for planning raw material trials (trials will be performed and supported by members of the Technical team).
• Maintaining audit ready standards at all times, working to BRC requirements.

Skills and requirements:

• Excellent organisational and communication skills.
• 5+ years of experience in procurement, supplier management, or supply chain, preferably in food, pet food or ingredients supply.
• Strong knowledge of raw material categories relevant to pet food e.g., meat meals, fresh and frozen proteins, grains, functional additives, vitamins and minerals, fats, and oils.
• Experience and expertise in various meat industry ways of working, animal anatomy, slaughter process, animal welfare and raw material handling.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities to identify trends or areas for improvement.
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally to visit suppliers and manufacturing facilities. It is expected that this role requires travel 2-3 days per week.
• Good IT skills including PowerPoint, Excel and Word.
• Supplier auditing experience or lead auditor qualification.
• Working collaboratively with the ability to work cross-functionally and influence without authority.
• Strategic thinker with attention to detail and execution focus.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic manufacturing environment.
• Strong ethical judgment and commitment to food safety and quality.