Wealth of experience in Natural Health and Food Industry:

Natural health

• NPD – Design & Development of Natural Health Programme for weight loss and stress support and supplements.
• Author of support material for new products – Fibre Blend; Men’s Supplement and Pregnancy Supplement.
• Review of supplement range in line with current literature, analysis of ingredients with recommendations
• Critically appraise the literature connected to media press release in relation to Natural Health Products.
• Label Compliance: Food label proof checks enabling optimization of food label changes to meet current legislation.
• Food label checks review compliance against the UK European Food Information to Consumer Regulation (FIC), EU No.1169/2011 and product specific legislation including on pack claims.
• Internal food allergy risk assessment and development of HACCP plan for natural health products.
• Raw material specification maintenance and managing updates from large supply base.
• Supplier approval documentation maintenance – reviewing SAQs and BRC certificates, reports and updating master files to maintain the information.
• International Customer Service support on natural health product queries.

Food Industry

Interim Specifications Technologist

Working within the technical department for a manufacturer that produces both sweet and savoury bakery products for major retailers such as M&S, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA, Co-op, Morrison’s and Fortnum and Mason. Directly interfacing with many departments and outside bodies including retail customers and material suppliers.

• Using raw material and packaging information to create finished product specifications for their retail customer base and own brand.
• Artwork reviews with Head of Technical to ensure that pack copy met legal requirements and labels were correct for their intended use.
• Artwork review using retail online artwork approval such as M&S Graphics Approver and Waitrose OB1.
• Working on multiple critical paths to customer requirements. Critical Path compliance – specification creation through to artwork approval.
• Convert NPD recipes into controlled technical recipe to include bake loss calculations
• International raw material queries for export.
• New ingredient raw material specification maintenance. Compliance to retail approved supplier lists.
• Implementing procedures to improve the flow of information. Actively involved in improving internal product data information system for own brand and retail customer.
• Customer relations and first hand communication with customer technologist, NPD, Artwork House and Printers.

Interim Specifications Technologist & Assistant Technical Manager

Working within a very busy technical department for a chilled and sterilised ambient food manufacturer that produces premium products for major retailers such as Waitrose and Tesco and high street restaurants such as Pret a Manger. This includes chilled soups, sauces, stocks and gravies as well as ambient retort sterilised soups, sauces, stocks and gravies.

Employed on an interim basis to cover various aspects of the Assistant Technical Manager’s role. On appointment of a new Assistant Technical Manager, the role changed to looking after FIR changes for retail labelled packs produced within the company. The aspects involved working on specifications for a Waitrose launch and a Tesco launch.

• Raw material specification maintenance and managing updates from large supply base
• Supplier approval documentation maintenance – reviewing SAQs and BRC certificates, reports and updating master files to maintain the information.
• Working with the Head of Technical on new supplier approvals for Tesco and Waitrose launches
• Using raw material and packaging specifications to create finished product specifications for Waitrose and Tesco. Systems used were micros based online specification systems such as TTL for Tesco and WRspec for Waitrose.
• Artwork reviews with Head of Technical to ensure that pack copy met legal requirements and labels were correct for their intended use.
• Assisted technical department in preparation for customer and 3^rd party audits.
• Produced detailed monthly technical reports for key customers including Waitrose and Pret a Manger. This involved collating all of the relevant data drawn from various resources and colleagues.
• Produced various internal technical and quality reports for the quality communications board for the factory. This included reports on customer complaints, environmental hygiene, GMP issues and status of non-conformances and non-conformance trends within the business.
• Updating 50+ existing finished retail product specifications to meet FIR requirements and submitting the specifications to collaborative draft before setting to pack copy sent. Reviewing and commenting on FIR amended artwork against the agreed pack copy before final approval and file to print stage.
• Successfully completed within a very limited time frame against a tight critical path for 12 Tesco Specifications to gold standard created from scratch on TTL for launch due in autumn 2014.

Delivery of Seminars/Talks

Nutrition and Well-being based  – to schools, groups and workforce’s, to make positive, practical changes to their food choices and general health.