Ingredients Manager
Role Overview
An experienced food professional will lead ingredient optimisation and management, delivering commercial, operational and quality benefits as apetito expands its Kitchen West production facility.
For the first 12–18 months, the role will be embedded in a project team identifying and delivering value, complexity-reduction and business-benefit opportunities.
As project outputs are embedded, the role will transition into a broader Ingredients Manager remit within the development team, with line management responsibility for Food Technologists and the NPD Raw Material and Change Control Co-ordinator.
The role is practical and hands-on, involving ingredient evaluation, supplier and internal-team collaboration, trials and implementation.
Key Skills for This Role
Full Job Posting
Role overview
An experienced food professional will lead ingredient optimisation and management, delivering commercial, operational and quality benefits as apetito expands its Kitchen West production facility.
For the first 12–18 months, the role will be embedded in a project team identifying and delivering value, complexity-reduction and business-benefit opportunities.
As project outputs are embedded, the role will transition into a broader Ingredients Manager remit within the development team, with line management responsibility for Food Technologists and the NPD Raw Material and Change Control Co-ordinator.
The role is practical and hands-on, involving ingredient evaluation, supplier and internal-team collaboration, trials and implementation.
Initial project responsibilities
- Identify and deliver ingredient, raw material, packaging and finished-product opportunities that improve cost, quality, consistency, operational performance and customer proposition.
- Work with Procurement, suppliers, project teams and cross-functional stakeholders to turn viable ideas into action.
- Manage an opportunity pipeline with defined benefits, plans, timings, dependencies, risks, resource needs and governance.
- Challenge cost, complexity, duplication and over-specification while protecting food safety, compliance, product quality, customer expectations and operations.
- Evaluate ingredients, materials and finished products through assessment, trials, technical validation and impact analysis.
- Drive approved changes through specification, change control, data, trial approval and implementation processes.
Ongoing Ingredients Manager responsibilities
- Lead the introduction of new and improved raw materials, packaging and finished goods to improve product quality, range propositions and competitiveness while reducing complexity.
- Lead Food Technologists and the NPD Raw Material and Change Control Co-ordinator, aligning priorities, workload, resources and projects.
- Ensure product information and specifications are accurate and comply with relevant requirements.
- Strengthen food technology, specification and change-control support across the business.
Required experience and capabilities
- Proven track record delivering cross-functional projects within food manufacturing.
- Ability to balance cost, complexity, quality and risk in a commercially thoughtful way.
- Technical expertise, commercial awareness and project management discipline.
- Ability to evaluate ingredients and materials, conduct trials and drive implementation with suppliers and internal teams.
- Highly organised, energetic and results-focused, with the ability to structure complex work, prioritise opportunities and deliver measurable, sustainable benefits.
- Confidence working through ambiguity and turning opportunities into action.
Workplace
- The role is based at apetito’s UK Head Office in Trowbridge, Wiltshire.
About apetito
apetito supplies food to health and social care sectors, including care homes, healthcare and education settings.
Wiltshire Farm Foods, its sister company, supplies frozen ready meals across the UK.
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