Global VP Food Safety

Global VP Food Safety

About Kerry

Kerry is the world's leading taste and nutrition company for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Every day we partner with customers to create healthier, tastier and more sustainable products that are consumed by billions of people across the world. Our vision is to be our customers' most valued partner, creating a world of sustainable nutrition. A career with Kerry offers you an opportunity to shape the future of food while providing you opportunities to explore and grow in a truly global environment.

About the role

This business-critical role with broad scope and responsibility has ownership for Food Safety Globally and dealing with Kerry's blue-chip customers. The VP of Food Safety will ensure that all manufacturing and supply chain functions and facilities are optimally managed and operate at globally superior standards for Food Quality, Health, Safety and environment.

The Global VP Food Safety leads the successful development and the embedding of a Food Safety & Quality Culture to achieve FSQ Excellence, with a focus on strategy, policies, food safety programs, sustainability and risk mitigation, allied to strong external and internal stakeholder management & communication.

The role will report directly to the Global QHSE Officer who is an active sponsor of the importance of this function and views Food Safety as one of Kerry's key differentiators with Customers.

Key responsibilities

• Support the Global QHSE Officer & Global Food Safety function with a focus on Customers, Strategy, Policies, Food Safety Programs and Risk Mitigation.

• Lead and supports the businesses within the regions to ensure that Kerry products and services continuously achieve and exceed customer (and other external, e.g. regulatory, academic) expectations in order to develop profitable (and sustainable) partnerships

• Lead and support all plant teams with regard to Food Safety and Sanitation global standard execution.

• Participation in regulatory, governance, academic, technical and trade association bodies / committees as required.

• Lead and support with Product risk assessments where FSQ is potentially impacted.

• Lead the standardization of best-practice methodologies and global standards of working

across the regional.

• During development and improvement of these food safety processes, ensure that product quality,

health and safety are not compromised or negatively impacted

• Lead a measurable and continuously-improving Food Safety Excellence culture across the globe

through the implementation of behavioral programs (e.g super 6, Zero, RCA, CAPAs, etc) while delivering to global customer satisfaction and aligning Food Safety and QHSE business objectives with clear KPI's.

• Monitoring and informing progress on KPIs globally (heat map, CC, audits, etc.).

• Lead and support QSHE talent development programs and succession planning will be vital to build a world class, customer focused function.

• Foundational Global programs implementation and embedment: HACCP; Sanitation, EMP, hygiene zone, Positive release, etc.

• Innovation and seek of future FSQ technologies: Industry groups, suppliers, etc (industry groups, etc while improving regulators relationships globally.

Qualifications and skills

The successful candidate will possess the following experience:

• Strong mix of strategic and operational experience at a leadership level within best practice, global food / beverage organizations, ideally on a regional basis where there has been a breadth of process technologies.

• Proven academic credentials with deep knowledge of food and beverage regulations and latest customer / consumer expectations. This technical credibility & very specific career history - from both an internal and external customer / regulatory / representative body etc. perspective - will be critical to position this person positively within the role.

• Career experience across numerous technical functional roles such as: supply quality, quality systems, regulatory, R&D, manufacturing, laboratory management and sustainability would be an advantage allied to a strong background in food chemistry, raw materials, sensory, microbiology, food packaging systems & food engineering

• Experience creating and implementing FSQ training programs and strategies across a multi-site, multi-technology, manufacturing business

• Knowledge of best practice FSQ crisis management process and experience implementing them

• Experience running internal and customer FSQ audits

• Proven evidence of identifying and driving continuous improvement and change management initiatives to develop a customer focused, best practice function.

• Clear customer focus with specific evidence to suggest he/she builds strong relationships based on trust and inspires confidence in customers. Prior experience dealing with Global FMCG customers is highly desirable.

• Strong evidence that he/she has managed talent for a global organisation and built winning teams

Competencies Required:

• Inspirational leader and strong role model/ambassador to the wider organisation

• Excellent interpersonal communication, relationship management and exceptional influencing and stakeholder management skills to be able work across all levels within an organisation

• A change agent - energised by making a difference and comfortable dealing with ambiguity

• Global outlook with an executive presence; demonstrates gravitas, credibility and quickly wins trust

• Results focused, service delivery mind-set and pragmatic approach

• Commercial nous and natural focus on ROI, project and budget management and control

• Politically astute, assertive, resilient and robust - with the proven ability to positively challenge

• History of managing and operating under demanding incident conditions on occasions to deliver effective and efficient solutions

• Strong communicator, who can operate, influence and achieve results