The Company

Our client is a leading food manufacturing business seeking a highly motivated and experienced General Manager of Manufacturing to lead and manage all aspects of Manufacturing, Maintenance, Capital Engineering, Procurement, Planning, Warehousing/Logistics, Finance & HR. As a key member of the leadership team, you will focus on compliance, continuous improvement, and Workplace Health & Safety, driving best practices to optimize operational performance, safety, and product quality. Your leadership will also empower and support the entire business through a further exciting growth phase.
 
The Role

Reporting to the CEO, your role will be responsible for:

• Provide strategic leadership across Manufacturing, Engineering/Maintenance, Production Planning and Logistics. 
• Develop and execute the manufacturing strategy to scale operations in line with company growth, empowering and supporting direct reports to meet operational demands.
• Lead, motivate, and engage teams across manufacturing, maintenance, logstics, safety, finance and HR to achieve individual, team, and site objectives.
• Lead Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) processes, balancing production capacity, inventory and customer demand.
• Implement leadership development programs to build a strong succession pipeline for long-term leadership stability.
• Promote a safety-first culture across the site, ensuring that WH&S processes are in place, including induction, training, and safety programs.
• Drive excellence in safety performance, risk awareness, and compliance with safety regulations.
• Foster a culture of innovation, operational discipline and continuous improvement across the entire operations function.

Your Background

In order to be successful in this role you will have:

• Significant senior leadership experience within a food, beverage, dairy, agricultural, meat or broader FMCG manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated success leading end-to-end Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Logistics functions – Ideally 5-10 years+ at this level.
• Tertiary qualifications in Engineering, Operations Management, Supply Chain or a related discipline will be highly regarded.
• Proven experience in developing and building strong leadership groups within a manufacturing plant leading to positive change.
• Must have the ability and track record of creating & delivering on the longer-term strategic vision.
• Experience working with engineering and being either involved from an Operations perspective on the delivery of large capital projects, ideally those that have included automated warehousing equipment & processes.
• Strong continuous improvement background with a good grasp of sophisticated continuous improvement methodologies such as LEAN / Six Sigma and 5Y problem-solving tools.
• Good commercial acumen, able to understand and manage finances / P&L with the ability to identify the key cost drivers in a fast-paced manufacturing plant.
• Strong communication, coaching, consultation and negotiation skills with an ability to engage and influence internal stakeholders.

 
What’s On Offer

In return, you’ll join a market-leading food manufacturer where you’ll have full operational ownership across Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Logistics. This is a highly influential role, offering the opportunity to shape business strategy, lead transformational change and build a world-class operations function. An attractive salary package is on offer, including base salary, superannuation, and performance-based bonus.

If you would like to discuss this opportunity further you can contact Maurice Tranchina at Blackbook Executive on 03 9823 7413.

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