The Plant Manager will oversee daily operations in the manufacturing plant located in Burlington, NJ ensuring production efficiency, quality standards, and safety compliance in the fast-moving food ingredients industry.
Client Details
A company in the food ingredients manufacturing sector.
Description
* Direct daily plant operations across all shifts to meet production schedules, customer specifications, and delivery commitments for toll and contract spray drying jobs.
* Own dryer utilization, throughput, and overtime performance; identify and correct root causes of downtime, scheduling conflicts, and labor cost overruns.
* Maintain full compliance with food safety, GMP, SQF/GFSI, and customer audit requirements; serve as the site's primary point of contact during regulatory and customer audits.
* Partner with the Quality and Food Safety team to uphold kosher supervision protocols, including coordination with the mashgiach, equipment koshering schedules, and documentation requirements.
* Enforce proper handling and storage of finished product and raw materials (including trailer/dock staging protocols) to protect product safety and temperature integrity.
* Manage plant P&L accountability at the site level: labor, utilities, maintenance, and consumables cost control against budget.
* Lead, develop, and hold accountable shift supervisors, production leads, and hourly staff; own hiring, performance management, and succession planning for the site.
* Drive a strong safety culture; own OSHA compliance, incident investigation, and corrective action closure.
* Plan and execute preventive maintenance programs in partnership with the maintenance team to protect dryer uptime and asset life.
* Manage the production schedule across dryers, coordinating with customer service and scheduling functions to sequence jobs and minimize changeover losses.
* Identify and lead continuous improvement initiatives (yield, changeover time, energy use, labor efficiency) and report progress to the Executive Team.
Profile
* Bachelor's degree in Food Science, Engineering, Operations Management, or equivalent experience; 7+ years in food or ingredient manufacturing, with at least 3 years in a plant or operations manager role.
* Spray drying, dry blending, or dairy/protein processing experience strongly preferred.
* Working knowledge of GMP, HACCP, SQF or comparable GFSI schemes; kosher (OU or equivalent) supervised facility experience is a plus.
* Strong people leadership skills with a track record of developing supervisors and hourly teams.
* Comfortable working with production scheduling tools and basic operational reporting/analytics.
* Available for on-site presence across shifts as needed, including responding to off-hours operational issues.
Job Offer
Interested? Apply today.
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