Food Manufacturing Talent Update – October 2026
At Corvin Fox, we speak with experienced professionals across the UK food and drink manufacturing sector every week.
Some are candidates who have impressed us during recent recruitment processes and narrowly missed out at final stage. Others are proven interim professionals coming back onto the market after completing successful assignments.
We call the first group Podium Finishers – candidates who have progressed through a highly targeted search and multiple stages of interview before narrowly missing out on an appointment.
This month, we are highlighting four experienced food manufacturing professionals across Health & Safety, Technical, Operations and Food Safety. Two are podium candidates we’ve recently come close to placing, and 2 are established interims.
Permanent Food Manufacturing Candidates
Health & Safety Manager – Norfolk
Experienced Health & Safety leader with a strong manufacturing background across food and other high-volume production environments. Having previously held senior Operations and Factory Management positions, he brings a practical understanding of how to improve safety without losing sight of operational performance.
In his current remit, he has responsibility across multiple manufacturing sites and has reduced accidents at one site by 74% within two years. He has also introduced improved vehicle and pedestrian segregation, strengthened board-level Health & Safety reporting and implemented safer systems around high-risk activities, including chemical handling.
His style is very hands-on and floor-based, with a strong focus on behavioural change, operator engagement and making safety practical and understandable across a diverse workforce.
Head of Technical / Senior Technical Manager – Lincolnshire
Experienced technical leader with 15 years across food manufacturing, spanning Technical, Supplier Assurance, Quality and Hygiene. She currently holds full site technical ownership, leading food safety, quality systems, hygiene, specifications, NPD, customer relationships and technical strategy while managing a sizeable multi-functional team.
She has a strong track record in technical systems improvement and change, including leading a full QMS overhaul, introducing a more robust document control system and implementing a group-wide complaints process across multiple sites. This work has supported improved site standards and root-cause analysis, contributing to a year-on-year complaint reduction of approximately 60%.
She has also redesigned product-quality monitoring, improving taste-panel performance from around 33% to 78–80%, with results subsequently reaching 90%.
Alongside this, she brings strong retailer and audit exposure and a collaborative leadership style focused on developing teams, improving food safety culture and delivering sustainable change.
Interim Food Manufacturing Professionals
Interim Operations Director / Site General Manager
Highly experienced interim operations leader with a strong track record in site turnaround, cost reduction, restructuring and operational improvement across food manufacturing. He has recently completed an assignment through Corvin Fox which was extended by the client.
Recent assignments have included delivering a 15% efficiency improvement, restructuring shift activity and managing redundancy programmes.
Elsewhere, he has delivered:
- £784,000 labour efficiency improvements
- £445,000 waste reduction
- 8% reduction in engineering downtime
- Installation of a £3.3m production line
- A £3.2m annualised cost-out programme
- 17% improvement in OEE
His wider experience includes taking loss-making food manufacturing sites back into profit and leading major restructuring, automation and capital investment programmes.
Interim Technical / Food Safety Leader
Experienced interim Technical and Food Safety leader specialising in technical turnaround, audit recovery and improving factory standards.
He brings more than 35 years of food manufacturing experience, extensive major retailer exposure and experience across more than 45 BRC audits. He has also recently completed a Corvin Fox assignment which resulted in a contract extension.
Recent assignments have included delivering a Food Safety & Quality Improvement Plan covering 900+ improvements, achieving BRC AA* and an ASDA Green audit, and supporting the technical delivery of a £6m investment programme.
His wider track record includes:
- Moving sites from Red to Bronze
- Achieving BRC Grade A within eight weeks
- Improving a key customer audit from Grade D to Grade A
- Supporting businesses in securing £25m+ of new customer business
He is particularly well suited to businesses needing immediate technical leadership, audit recovery, food safety improvement or additional support through periods of change.
Looking for Food Manufacturing Talent?
These are just a small selection of the permanent and interim professionals currently within our network.
Corvin Fox recruits across the UK food and drink manufacturing sector, covering areas including Operations, Technical, Health & Safety, Engineering, Supply Chain, Procurement, HR and Senior Leadership.
If you have a permanent vacancy coming up, or a project where experienced interim support could make a difference, get in touch with our team.
