Manufacturing Site Manager (Manufacturing/Maintenance & Engineering/Quality)

Addiction Pet Foods; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 1,328,000 - 1,898,000; Full time

Job summary

Addiction Foods NZ is seeking a Manufacturing Site Manager to lead our Te Puke facility in Bay of Plenty. You will drive operations, safety, quality, and continuous improvement across the site, reporting to the CEO and aligning with engineering, maintenance, and QA teams.

The role demands strong leadership of multidisciplinary teams, focus on cost control, and a culture of safety and performance excellence in a high-hygiene food environment.

Qualifications

• At least 5-8 years of progressive manufacturing experience with operational leadership.
• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams (production, QA, engineering, maintenance, safety).
• Degree in Engineering, Food Science, or related technical discipline.

Responsibilities

• Lead plant operations, safety, quality, and process reliability.
• Drive OEE, throughput, and cost control.
• Develop staff and coach leaders on the floor.
• Manage budgets and collaborate with cross-functional teams.

Skills

Plant leadership

Operational leadership

People development

Safety culture

Cost control

Quality systems

Lean Manufacturing

Six Sigma

ERP/MRP

Equipment reliability

Education

Engineering degree

Food Science degree

Related technical discipline

Tools

SAP

Microsoft Dynamics

ERP/MRP systems

Job description

About The Job

Manufacturing Site Manager (Overseas Employment)

Location: Te Puke, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand

Now Hiring from South Africa.

Are you a hands-on manufacturing leader ready to take your career to New Zealand?

Addiction Foods NZ is looking for a Manufacturing Manager to lead our pet food manufacturing facility in Te Puke, Bay of Plenty. This is a senior site leadership role for someone who knows how to run a plant, lead people, drive operational discipline, and build a high-performance manufacturing culture.

This role is ideal for a South African manufacturing leader with strong experience in food, FMCG, dairy, export manufacturing, animal nutrition, pet food, or high-hygiene production environments.

As Manufacturing Manager, you will provide operational leadership and site governance for our New Zealand manufacturing facility. You will help drive production performance, safety, quality, engineering reliability, cost control, and people development across the site. The role reports to the CEO and leads key plant functions including operations, quality, process development, engineering, maintenance, and EHS.

Why This Role Matters

• This is not just a production management role.
• You will be leading a site that supports premium pet nutrition for domestic and export markets.
• You will be expected to bring structure, urgency, accountability, and continuous improvement to the plant.
• You will work closely with Supply Chain, Finance, R&D, regulatory stakeholders, engineering, QA, and production teams.
• We need someone who can walk the floor, understand the numbers, coach leaders, solve operational issues, and make sure the plant delivers safely, efficiently, and consistently.

What You’ll Lead

• You will drive the manufacturing roadmap to meet production, domestic, and export demand.
• You will lead capacity planning, resource allocation, throughput improvement, and operational performance.
• You will oversee quality and process performance, including OEE, yield improvement, food safety, and compliance with New Zealand manufacturing and export requirements.
• You will work with engineering and maintenance leaders to improve equipment reliability, reduce unplanned downtime, and support site CAPEX and TPM initiatives.
• You will partner with the EHS function to strengthen safety culture, risk management, and compliance.
• You will manage plant operating costs across labour, utilities, raw material variance, and maintenance.
• You will build and develop a strong site culture through active leadership, supervisor coaching, training, performance management, and staff engagement.

Who We’re Looking For

We are looking for a proven manufacturing leader who has:

• Strong plant or site leadership experience in food, FMCG, dairy, pet food, animal feed, meat, beverage, or other high-care manufacturing environments.
• At least 5-8 years of progressive manufacturing experience, with solid exposure to operational leadership.
• Experience managing multidisciplinary teams, including production, QA, engineering, maintenance, safety, and process improvement.
• Technical background, ideally with a degree in Engineering, Food Science, or a related technical discipline.
• Strong understanding of food safety, HACCP, quality systems, Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, TPM, 5S, Kaizen, RCA, ERP/MRP, and production performance management.
• Commercial discipline, with the ability to manage plant budgets, control costs, reduce waste, and improve cost-per-tonne without compromising quality.
• A safety-first leadership style, with the ability to build a culture where people take ownership of safety, quality, and performance.

Highly Advantageous

• Experience in export food manufacturing, high-hygiene production, thermal processing, extrusion, drying, coating, or pet food manufacturing will be highly regarded.
• Experience with ERP/MRP systems such as SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, or similar platforms will also be an advantage.

What Makes You a Strong Fit

• You are not a desk-only manager. You are visible on the floor.
• You know how to set clear expectations and follow through.
• You can challenge performance gaps without creating fear.
• You can build leaders, not just manage tasks.
• You understand that manufacturing excellence requires discipline, safety, quality, engineering reliability, cost control, and people development working together.
• You are resilient, practical, humble, and committed to doing things properly.

Location

This role is based on-site at our manufacturing plant in Te Puke, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.

We are open to strong candidates currently based in South Africa who are willing to relocate and take on a long-term manufacturing leadership opportunity in New Zealand.