Company Overview
Nature’s Touch is a global leader in the frozen fruits industry, supplying the retail and industrial sectors in North America, Australia, Taiwan and Japan. We provide a full range of products and support multiple private-label programs in addition to our own brands. We are also one of the largest buyers of fruit globally each year and continue to enjoy strong growth in this emerging category in retail.
The role
Reporting to the VP of Food Safety and Quality Assurance, the Corporate Quality Improvement Leader drives continuous improvement initiatives in FSQA across the organization while ensuring compliance with food safety and quality standards. As a key leader in project management and change management for the FSQA department, this role leads the implementation of FSQA programs, fosters a culture of food safety, quality, and process optimization, and ensures alignment with customer, regulatory, and certification requirements. Additionally, the position focuses on identifying opportunities for operational FSQA efficiencies and improvements, ensuring the highest standards in product quality, safety, and customer satisfaction.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide leadership in managing, improving, and implementing company-wide quality assurance programs (e.g., HACCP, SQF), ensuring ongoing compliance with local, national, and international standards, regulations, and customer requirements.
- Promote a continuous improvement culture within all FSQA processes, ensuring the alignment of FSQA initiatives with organizational goals.
- Identify, lead, and implement continuous improvement initiatives to enhance FSQA compliance efficiently.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify and implement process improvements that drive long-term operational excellence.
- Performs Internal audits, monthly and annual FSQA KPIs reviews, and attends the HACCP and SQF monthly meetings; Identifies gaps and food safety risks and contributes to root cause analysis (RCA) and corrective and preventive action (CAPA) processes with the operations to avoid recurrence.
- Oversees the analysis, and the efficiency of resolving customer complaints to prevent recurrence while ensuring proper documentation follow-ups and reporting.
- Maintains good documentation in the customers' portal.
- Communicates the RCA and CAPA to the customer, maintaining a good professional relationship liaison.
- Work closely with plant operations, production teams, and other departments to support the effective implementation and maintenance of quality control processes and FSQA programs.
- Provide training and guidance to plant teams on quality assurance and food safety culture, good practices, good documentation, and continuous improvement principles.
- With its strong quality of project management and change management : Manage the FSQA part of new projects (engineering, innovation, etc) by : Participating in the meetings linked to a new project to ensure food safety considerations are integrated into the design and manufacturing process; In collaboration with the relevant teams, provide the validation protocols to the appropriate operational team; Ensure the validation process is respected and well executed.
Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in food science or related discipline.5 - 10 years experience in progressively senior Quality Assurance and Food Safety roles in a Food processing environment.Lean Manufacturing certified.Green Belt certified.Project Management, quality management, and process software tools.Knowledge and experience in HACCP, GFSI (SQF code is a plus) certification environment.Food safety experience in a ready-to-eat environment is a plus.Highly autonomous, organized, structured, rigorous, analytical, meticulous, and resourceful.Risk-based mindset.Good time-management, prioritization and priority-setting skills.Ability to work independently and as part of a team.Excellent knowledge of Microsoft Office.Strong communication skills (written and verbal) in English.Strong teamwork, collaboration, and mobilization mindset.Must have a valid passport to travel around the world.