NPD Manager

The Company

As one of the fastest growing and well established food manufacturing groups in the UK our client produces a plethora of delicious and diverse products across numerous categories. They are now seeking a NPD Manager to deliver high quality food solutions for one of their leading retail customers.

The Role

In this fast paced profile innovations role you’ll play an instrumental part in developing new and existing product ranges to keep up with customer and consumer expectations in this ever changing market.  You will manage and support a small NPD team, taking the lead in developing and driving innovative product concepts. You’ll work from receipt of customer brief through to process scale up, creating commercially viable products that encompass emerging market trends whilst supporting the implementation of the innovations strategy.

An important aspect of your role will also be working closely with key customers as you will be the main point of contact, building strong and lasting relationships. You will undertake competitor analysis, establish an acute awareness for emerging trends and also challenge existing products and processes to promote continuous improvement in order to maintain the companies place in the market.

You will also work closely with internal teams to identify new opportunities within your category whilst applying your market knowledge to evaluate the commercial viability of new products to ensure you never compromise on taste and quality.

The Person

This role would suit a creative, tenacious and credible NPD Manager or Product Manager who has experience of working within inventive and complex product categories.  You'll have a proven track record of driving the development of creative new products where you have delivered persuasive presentations and established great relationships with the major retailers.

You must also have excellent team management skills with the ability to empower and develop a creative team to reach their potential. You'll need to have superb interpersonal and communication skills coupled with a resourceful and flexible approach to the NPD process in order to lead your team with integrity in order to deliver successful NPD projects.

We do our utmost to get back to candidates quickly but if you have not heard back from us within 5 days then your application has not been successful on this occasion.  

Due to the high volume of applications we receive,  We are sorry to say that we are unable to respond to candidates that do not possess the required food & drink industry experience required for our vacancies.