Food Safety Manager

About Princes

The Princes Group has over 7,000 employees with offices and production sites in the UK, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, France, and Mauritius. Princes manufactures 350 different food and drink products responsibly sourced and enjoyed by consumers every day. None of this would be possible without striving to be an employer of choice, where our colleagues are proud to represent our business.

Role Description

Job Purpose

• This role is accountable for defining, direct management and continuous improvement of all governance requirements concerning Food Safety on the site.
• This role will support the site Technical Manager who manages all direct factory and shift responsibility covering off people, product and process for the factory operations.
• To ensure strong and proactive relationships are in place within and between site technical and operations teams.
• This role is accountable for the technical performance of compliance requirements, HACCP implementation, technical strategy outputs, thermal controls, audit management and standards, and site governance for customer requirements.
• The role is deputy to the Senior Technical Manager and supports the leadership of the group and site technical strategy outputs.
• This role supports the overall site delivery and technical teams to ensure quality, legal, food safety, brand integrity and culture is driven and compliant.
• Lead all audit requirements to drive a robust review programme to assess compliance, hygiene and GMP monitoring assessments.
• Management of all 3rd party and EHO audit requirements, including preparation, facilitation, conclusion, review and corrective action follow ups.
• Ensure all sites risk assessments are in place to cover the requirements of the BRC standards requirements. This includes allergenic, cleaning, adulterations, claims, nutritional, microbiological, chemical, shelf life and quality inspections points.
• Leadership to drive continuous improvement in food safety standards within the technical department and across site, developing short-, medium- and long-term strategies, leading focused improvement teams in Complaints, Compliance and HACCP fundamentals.
• To work with the Quality Services Manager to maintain, review, audit and continuously improve the site quality system in accordance with central policies, customer requirements and BRC/ISO standards, implementing industry “best practices”.
• Facilitate the evaluation of the sites operating practices and procedures in line with the HACCP Management System with audits, reviews and verification measures in place covering all pre-requests and CCP’s.

Principal Responsibilities

• Drive and lead all quality management systems, audit management for internal and third party completion including preparation, management and corrective action close out, factory fundamentals of HACCP, food defence and integrity, CCP process controls of pasteurisation/ sterilisation.
• Define the appropriate process validation parameters for the pasteurisation system including worst case for all aspects to develop the operating safe working practices for the factory running conditions. Define the process conditions and escalation protocols linked to process deviations and build the technical requirements based on HACCP principles.
• Ensure the HACCP risk assessments systems are robust, reflective and effectively managed to produce products right first time.
• Define all external testing requirements with suitable testing regimes to verify pack claim verification.
• Collaborate with the site QA and NPD technical teams to monitor, improve, trend and continuously challenge the quality standards of the product attributes both through end finished product testing, inbound sampling and on-line assessments to manage the end to end process and product specifications, promoting a right first time approach by clear defined specification and factory operating specifications.
• Define and manage the calibration systems to ensure all equipment involved in the safety and quality monitoring purposes are suitably assessed to traceable national standards. Work with the site OEM’s and engineering teams, to ensure the calibration and verification activities are completed at the set frequency. Ensure the process of standard deviation and measurement of uncertainty is factored into the operation processes.
• Conduct the required audits including CIP, clean as you go, GMP, internal audits and finished product cleaning standards. Ensuring all activities meet the standard of microbiological performance, allergen removal, quality spoilage limits and site KPI’s are achieved.
• Team management for an effective team, responsible for development, training, coaching, mentoring and workload organisation.
• Liaise with the Group Technical function and across other sites to share and implement best practice to drive the Princes Group standards.
• Define, monitor and review the testing regimes for authenticity, adulteration, allergenic, microbiological and chemical performance across raw materials, WIP and finished products for the duration of life to support claims status and customer requirements whilst maintaining the department budget.
• Working with the site Operations and Hygiene Manager, support investigations based on analyst sampling data and develop a continuous improvement approach for the team to Go, look & see audit process.
• Lead the site laboratory teams and areas for effective microbiological, chemical and adulteration monitoring programmes. This includes CLAS Laboratory accreditation certification requirements.
• The role will lead, support, train and manage the microbiologist team to perform the required product analyst both within the Lab and Factory operating environment, to the correct standard with a continuous improvement approach.
• Lead and support the review of the site HACCP validation and operating parameters for all food safety aspects.
• Ensure systems are in place to cover the authenticity requirements for adulteration governance requirements including testing schedules, supplier management and release protocols to support all claims.
• Define the systems for calibration, process validation of the key production pasteurisation equipment, Laboratory management and monitoring for nutritional, authenticity and quality assessment of the end finished product. The role will work alongside the site technical teams to evaluate the cleaning and CIP performance to ensure compliance with food safety, health and safety, environmental legislation requirements.
• Define the appropriate process validation parameters for the pasteurisation system including worst case for all aspects to develop the operating safe working practices for the factory running conditions. Define the process conditions and escalation protocols linked to process deviations and build the technical requirements based on HACCP principles.
• Lead and manage the site analysts to conduct all laboratory duties. To manage the training and development of the site analysts to of the plan, lead and support on out of specification investigations including out of hours.
• Leadership of the thermal protocols, validation and heat distribution requirements for all products, sterilisation equipment and trial testing requirements to ensure complete sterilisation is adhered to for a commercially sterile requirement.
• Countersign all of the thermal validation studies completed for compliance to the customer thermal validation requirements.
• Verification of the thermal processing manuals are live for all available routes linked to product processing routes.
• Escalation of any adversities of out of specification data and instigate product holds if needed.
• Working with the Company Thermal Process Manager, ensure the efficacy of thermal processes of site products and processes to comply with relevant company and statutory requirements, and standards for retailers and accreditation bodies. Ensure calibration of equipment to within acceptable limits.

Role Requirements

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Experience of developing and managing high performing teams.
• Degree / Post Graduate level qualification in science or food technology (or equivalent experience).
• Experience of managing customer technical relationships within a UK retail customer facing role.
• Technical expertise within a wide range of food manufacturing operations.
• Experience of technical management at a senior level across different areas of food supply businesses (Site / Supplier / Customer).
• Comprehensive knowledge of UK retailer codes of practice and how to implement these effectively within food manufacturing and supply businesses.
• Level 4 HACCP and Food Safety.
• 3rd party audit knowledge: BRC, IFS, Red Tractor, Soil Association, Claims such as: Organics, Gluten Free.
• To maintain product Food Safety, Legality, Integrity, Authenticity and Quality standards by ensuring all associated policies and procedures are adhered to.

At Princes we are committed to making all stages of our recruitment process accessible to all candidates (including application). Please let us know as soon as possible of any additional support or reasonable adjustments you require through the recruitment process by emailing Recruitment@princes.co.uk

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