Manchester Area | Food Manufacturing | Permanent
Are you an NPD leader who knows how to turn a great dessert concept into a commercially successful launch?
We’re recruiting an NPD Manager for an established food manufacturer in the Manchester area, leading product development within the desserts category.
This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can combine creativity with strong commercial and operational thinking, managing the journey from customer brief and kitchen concept through factory trials, scale-up and successful launch.
The Role
- Lead the NPD function across the desserts category
- Manage projects from concept through to launch
- Lead, coach and develop the NPD team
- Work directly with major UK retail customers
- Translate customer briefs and market trends into commercially viable products
- Lead recipe development, benchmarking and product presentations
- Oversee factory trials, scale-up and product handover
- Partner with Technical, Operations, Commercial, Procurement and Process teams
- Drive innovation while balancing quality, cost, manufacturability and margin
- Identify opportunities for renovation, value engineering and category growth
What We’re Looking For
You will ideally have:
- NPD/Product Development experience within food category
- Experience managing or developing an NPD team
- Strong concept-to-launch experience
- Customer-facing exposure with UK retailers
- Experience taking products from development kitchen into factory production
- Strong commercial awareness around costing, margin and value engineering
- The confidence to challenge, influence and work cross-functionally
- A practical, creative and delivery-focused leadership style
Why Consider It?
This is an opportunity to take genuine ownership of NPD within a fast-moving category, influence the innovation pipeline and work closely with both customers and the wider manufacturing operation.
If you understand that successful NPD isn’t just about creating a great product it’s about creating something the customer wants, the factory can make and the business can make money from I’d like to speak with you.
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