Business Development Manager

The role will involve building and developing a multi-channel portfolio of customers across salads and herbs before moving into more complex crops such as fruit, wheat, soy, and rice. The ideal candidate will be able to attract new clients, research new market opportunities and develop long-term relationships that deliver sustainable revenue and profit growth. 

Roles and Responsibilities include:

• Focus on building new business, converting leads into sales.
• Use data and analytics to create plans for business growth and model future farm plans. 
• Effective stakeholder management – e.g. customers, SLT, operations, planning, agronomy and technical.  
• Manage customer briefs and work cross functionally to build pricing proposals and customer joint business plans.
• Set, monitor, and evaluate sales and profitability vs forecast.
• Negotiate price and volumes to achieve budgets and business plans.
• Manage products commercially through a lifecycle and be able to positively manage inflationary and other business challenges.
• Be the customer champion and communicate customer plans internally to ensure the farm is living the customer values.
• Balance the internal requirements and business challenges with the external customer pressures.

This role requires someone who has experience in the salads and herbs category. The ideal candidate will have a good understanding of costs of goods sold, market pricing and strong knowledge of the bagged salad and herb category.  With the role being focused on new business development we are looking for an individual who is well networked, driven, self-motivated and tenacious. The right candidate will be able to demonstrate a strong understanding of the P&L by producing and presenting factful, data-based information, that helps support and inform the commercial strategy for current and future farms. Although the role is home based there will be a need to be in our farms which are situated in Norwich and Lichfield.  You will also be required to travel to customer meetings.

Please contact:   hr@fischerfarms.co.uk

Production Operative – Barton-under-Needwood and Norwich

Fischer Farms are looking for Production Operative to join the team at their Farms in Barton-under-Needwood and Norwich to facilitate the running of automated vertical farming machinery, including harvesting, sowing and automated retrieval from growing locations. The role will involve monitoring growing conditions within the farming environment, performing routine hygiene tasks, out loading of finished product, and quality control.

Roles and responsibilities: –

• Monitoring of growing conditions within the vertical farm to ensure a constant growing environment is maintained.
• Running an automated storage and retrieval system for moving product around the farm.
• Monitoring the automated harvesting and sowing operations.
• Manual weighing and bulk packing of product ready for dispatch.
• Routine daily hygiene tasks, including but not limited to sweeping, clean down of process line and cleaning of process areas and goods in/out areas.
• Dispatch of finished goods by forklift from cold storage.
• Preparation of production areas ready for processing, including but not limited to restocking of process line, crate washing and restocking of growing media.
• Addition of nutrient solutions and salts to irrigation and RO systems, along with regular checking of these systems.
• Completion of auditing and checklist for quality purposes to ensure conformance.
• Have an active role in providing solutions for continuous improvements.
• Ensure adherence to food safety regulations and procedures.
• Ensure adherence to health and safety procedures.
• Compile safe work instructions and play an active role in the production of risk assessments for production areas.
• Use of a forklift truck for offloading goods in and loading goods out, as well as moving of equipment and stock within the farm.
• Help maintain Good Manufacturing process by keeping work areas clean and tidy.
• Any additional reasonable tasks that your line manager deems appropriate.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience of working within a high care food manufacturing facility.
• Good communication skills to communicate with a dispersed supporting team.
• Forklift license would be an advantage, although full training will be provided.
• Reliable mode of transport for reaching a remote work location.
• Acceptable command of the English Language.

Please contact:   hr@fischerfarms.co.uk