R&D Manager Taste & Beverage

About Kerry

Kerry is the world's leading taste and nutrition company for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Every day we partner with customers to create healthier, tastier and more sustainable products that are consumed by billions of people across the world. Our vision is to be our customers' most valued partner, creating a world of sustainable nutrition. A career with Kerry offers you an opportunity to shape the future of food while providing you opportunities to explore and grow in a truly global environment.

About the role

Work location:         Lonsdale, Adelaide Australia
Reporting to:           RD&A Director – ANZ

In this role, you must be a strong leader who can leverage appropriate resources, develop relationships, and provide coordination of all Taste activities, including creation and applications (focus on beverage). With responsibility for delivering on the growth strategy plan and driving innovation in the assigned end use markets. Concurrently, you will play a key role in managing creation, application, sampling, and flavour collection by working efficiently to support customer briefs while maintaining a vision of what will work best for customers and Kerry. Having an extensive understanding of raw materials, finished products, production, regulatory, analytical and flavours application, is important for this role. 

Key responsibilities

• Responsible for all Taste activities within ANZ, across all major End Use Markets, customers, and channels. Including leading an applications team focusing on beverage, dairy, bakery, and fragrances.
• Responsible for Taste development projects from initiation to launch. Interacts with process engineers, flavourist, commercial team, suppliers, manufacturing, customers, packaging, and marketing specialists to resolve problems.
• Have a strong understanding of raw materials, solid formula design and process know how across flavour and fragrance technologies.
• The Taste & Beverage Manager will develop strong relationships with global customers and drive-up win rates on key projects.
• Work with cross functional team to optimize the strengths of Kerry and deliver the best Taste and Nutrition experience for our customers.
• Utilize Kerry technology to deliver unique solutions to project brief.
• Work closely with all EUM Teams (End Use Markets) within Kerry.
• Partner with Taste Collections team to strengthen the Kerry customer solutions portfolio.
• Work with Business Development in rolling out Taste technologies.
• Play leading role in technical presentations and working sessions with customers.
• Mentoring and training the Taste creation team.
• Work with analytical group on flavour matching projects; collaborate with analytical team to develop and utilize new methods of analysis.
• Employ thorough knowledge of relevant regulatory and labelling requirements for flavours.
• Participate in sensory panels.

Qualifications and skills

• Bachelor’s Degree in Food Science, Chemistry or Chemical Engineering or relevant field.
• Minimum 10 years of Flavour industry, Food Ingredients, Beverage manufacturer or similar background.
• Strong people-manager experience, fueled by genuine passion and enthusiasm for team leadership. 
• Good background in organic chemistry, food chemistry, flavour, and fragrance applications.
• Strong and discerning sense of smell and taste.
• Broad flavour experience across multiple end-use markets is desirable (experience in Fragrance will be beneficial)
• Demonstrates strong ability to work with cross-functional teams at multi levels within the organization.