Senior Machine Operative

Hotel Chocolat; Huntingdon; On-site; GBP 30,080 - 36,765; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Enhanced maternity leave

Paternity leave

Company pension contributions

50% staff discount on products

Guest 70% discount at Rabot Estate

Job summary

Hotel Chocolat is seeking a Senior Machine Operative for its Hadley Park factory in Huntingdon. You’ll lead production lines, manage start-ups and a small team to deliver on plan, while maintaining cost, quality and safety.

The role requires strong English, GMP knowledge and a proactive approach to process improvements within a high-volume chocolate environment. Competitive salary and company benefits apply.

Qualifications

• Must have knowledge of KPIs and be able to monitor line performance.
• Excellent command of English, both spoken and written.
• Experience with food production standards and hygiene practices.

Responsibilities

• Proactive: set up machinery and change parts on lines.
• Coordinate with departments to ensure materials, parts and packaging are ready.
• Own start-up and staffing of production lines to hit targets.
• Ensure GMP, health & safety and product specifications are met.
• Lead line PMR activity and drive continuous improvement.

Skills

KPIs

Verbal English

Production knowledge

Education

Food Safety Level 2

HACCP trained

Job description

As we continue our mission to make people and nature happy through reinventing chocolate, we’re looking for a Senior Machine Operative to join our Chocolate Manufacturing Team on a permanent basis. Our Senior Machine Operatives are vital in ensuring compliance with the Production Plan in supporting delivery our world-class chocolate on time and in full across our customer network. You will support in leading an effective team, taking ownership for the production line and change overs, driving the team in completion of required plan whilst taking into consideration cost, quality and efficiency.

Salary: £33,423.00 per annum

Shift Pattern: Monday to Friday on a weekly rotating shift pattern of 6am – 2pm and 2pm – 10pm.

As well as a competitive salary and a range of company benefits including enhanced maternity and paternity leave and Company pension contributions, you’ll receive 50% discount on all products, and a 70% discount for you and your guests when you stay at our Rabot Estate hideaway on the paradise island of Saint Lucia.

The onsite location for this role is at our Factory ‘Hadley Park’, in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, right in the heart of where our chocolates are made and where weekly, we can produce between 4 to 6 million of the chocolates we all know and love.

Hadley Park is just 5 minutes off the A141 and 1.3 miles from Huntingdon train station, with direct rail links to London King’s Cross.

What you’ll be doing…

• Proactive: Setting up machinery, including but not limited to, changing over change parts of on the lines. You will work with wolf/copper panners, CAD, auto-demolding, shell depositor and cold press, CAP depositor, CAD depositor, Fuji, Fuji2, puddles depositor, enrobers.
• Working collaboratively with other departments to ensure that all required items are available and ready to support the smooth efficient running of the lines, i.e., machinery/ ingredients / packaging. Communicating any shortages and discrepancies to your line manager on time to support plan completion. Ensuring that plan delivered on time and to costed expectation or better with targeted quality loss of less than 1% and delivering ‘Right First-Time’ products.
• Ownership: Owning the start-up of the production lines, ensuring that the correct staffing is in place to hit required targets or PMR’s in place on the production lines. Leading the team to successfully complete plan to required specifications, owning the clean down of the line between products and line start-up inspections to ensure that the line is free from any cross-contamination of the last run. Owning the sign-off and completing the paperwork checks.
• Continuously driving a culture of asset specific standards and settings across all shifts. Ensure 100% compliance with product specification. Conducting GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) compliance in your work area. Ensure compliance with all Health and Safety systems and to be always responsible for your own Health and Safety and the Health and Safety of others around you. Food safety standard compliance and hygiene, and PPE policies adhered to. Production is right first time to set specifications and requirements of our customers.
• Ensure all Piranha requests are submitted to engineering for downtimes. Leading Running the day-to-day management of the line. Ensuring that the team are adhering to set requirements for product and personal behavior. Reporting breakdowns in a timely manner, making the right decision. Ensuring team training is up to date. Supporting Training and mentoring new starters within the business on your asset / process. Leading the team in All PMR activity required on the line per product group. Being an ambassador of driving the culture of pride for the produce by setting and demanding high standards. Be able to talk an external auditor through your process / procedure around utilising your asset. Proactive care and targeted hygiene work with the Hygiene team to ensure work area and asset stays in the best standard.
• Challenging Identify opportunities, plan how process can be improved. PMR activity Yield / Material Variance / Packaging Waste / Inventory waste / Line Efficiency etc. Working project to show savings from improvements on the line / process. Demonstration of tools used for improvement. Involvement in 5S and other Kaizen instruments developed for site. Be able to challenge constructively and to be able to receive feedback openly. Have a collaborative working approach. Seek continuous personal development.

Who you are…

• Essential Food Safety Level 2 qualification.
• Knowledge of KPIs.
• Strong verbal and written English to clearly discuss performance of your asset / process.

• Desirable Knowledge of Continuous Improvement skills, with the ability to deploy critical thinking.
• HACCP trained.

Who are we?

We’re one of the UK’s favourite premium chocolate brands, with a range of products spanning luxury gifts, alcohol and our pioneering drinking chocolate system, the Velvetiser™. A cacao pod takes years to grow – it can’t be rushed if it’s going to be just right for our products. The same can be said for Hotel Chocolat, which originally started as a mint production company before we realised it was luxury chocolate that we were really passionate about. Now, we’re market leaders in the industry. What began as an online-only business grew to over 100 stores across the UK, and we’re still growing… Today, we’re multi-category, multi-channel, and multi-territory, and our customers, colleagues, cacao farmers and suppliers all benefit from the success we make together.

To learn more about us and read about our People Pledge – our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion – hotelchocolat.com/uk/engaged-ethics/our-people.html