Job Description: Factory Manager

Industry: Bottling Plant / Food & Beverage Manufacturing
Experience Required: Minimum 5 years
Employment Type: Full-time

Role Overview

We are looking for an experienced Factory Manager to oversee daily operations in a bottling plant, including production, quality control, food safety, maintenance planning, cost control, budgeting, and hands-on factory improvements.

The ideal candidate must have at least 5 years of experience in a bottling plant or food and beverage manufacturing environment. They must be practical, hands-on, and able to manage people while also understanding machinery, production flow, and factory operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage daily factory and production operations.
• Ensure products meet quality control and food safety standards.
• Maintain hygiene, sanitation, GMP, and factory cleanliness procedures.
• Oversee and verify CIP cleaning procedures, including chemicals, timing, temperature, rinsing, and records.
• Monitor bottling machines, filling machines, capping machines, labeling machines, conveyors, packing equipment, pumps, tanks, piping, valves, sensors, and water flow systems.
• Identify and solve production, mechanical, quality, and operational issues.
• Prepare and follow preventive maintenance plans for factory machinery and equipment.
• Work with operators, technicians, suppliers, and maintenance teams to reduce downtime and improve efficiency.
• Train and supervise factory staff on machine operation, hygiene, food safety, cleaning, and maintenance procedures.
• Maintain production records, quality reports, maintenance logs, CIP records, breakdown reports, cost records, and budget reports.
• Monitor raw materials, packaging materials, finished goods, waste, rejects, labor usage, utilities, machine downtime, and production efficiency.
• Support management in reducing waste, controlling costs, improving productivity, and maintaining consistent product quality.

Bottling Machine Knowledge Required

The candidate must have strong practical knowledge of bottling line equipment, including:

• Bottle rinsing machines
• Filling machines
• Capping machines
• Labeling machines
• Conveyors and bottle transfer systems
• Date coding and batch coding machines
• Shrink wrapping, packing, and palletizing equipment
• Pumps, tanks, filters, piping, valves, sensors, and water/product flow systems

They must understand machine start-up, shutdown, cleaning, changeovers, filling accuracy, cap sealing, label alignment, bottle handling, line balancing, and common bottling problems such as jams, leaks, underfilling, overfilling, poor coding, poor sealing, and high rejection rates.

Costing & Budget Requirements

The Factory Manager must understand production costing, factory budgets, and cost control. This includes monitoring:

• Raw material and packaging costs
• Labor costs
• Water, electricity, fuel, and chemical usage
• Spare parts and maintenance costs
• Machine downtime and production losses
• Waste, rejects, and rework
• Cost per bottle, batch, production run, and finished product

They should be able to compare actual costs against budgets, identify variances, explain cost issues, and recommend corrective actions.

Required Skills & Experience

• Minimum 5 years’ experience in bottling, food production, beverage production, or similar manufacturing.
• Strong knowledge of food safety, hygiene, sanitation, GMP, and quality control.
• Practical understanding of CIP systems and procedures.
• Good technical understanding of machinery, pumps, piping, sensors, valves, tanks, conveyors, and mechanical equipment.
• Ability to follow and improve maintenance plans.
• Hands-on ability to carry out or supervise practical factory works.
• Strong leadership, problem-solving, communication, and record-keeping skills.
• Ability to manage teams, reduce downtime, control costs, and improve factory performance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in food technology, mechanical engineering, industrial maintenance, production management, quality control, accounting, or operations management.
• Experience with HACCP, GMP, ISO 22000, BRC, FSSC 22000, or similar food safety systems.
• Experience in water, juice, dairy, soft drinks, sauces, edible oils, or other liquid bottling operations.
• Knowledge of PLC-controlled machines, sensors, pneumatic systems, electrical panels, ERP systems, stock control, or cost tracking software is an advantage.

Personal Qualities

The ideal candidate should be practical, hands-on, reliable, responsible, cost-conscious, detail-oriented, and comfortable working directly on the factory floor. They must be able to lead staff firmly but fairly, work under pressure, solve problems quickly, and take responsibility for production quality, machine performance, hygiene, costs, and operational improvements.

Send your cv: [email protected]