NPD Manager
An NPD Manager working for an FMCG food or drinks manufacturer sits within the Innovation or New Product Development (NPD) team. They are responsible for creating new product lines which the business will then sell into grocer channels specific retailers. They may manufacture products for Top 4 Grocery accounts such as Tesco, Asda, Morrisons or Sainsbury's or premium retailers such as Waitrose and Marks & Spencer (M&S). Alternatively they may produce and launch product lines within the Convenience, Out of Home (OOH) or food service channels. They will be head office based but will spend a huge amount time on site at factories ensuring their branded or own label products are being produced to a high quality and managing factory trials. They will work closely with other internal functions such as Sales, Marketing, Category, Technical and Operations. A NPD Manager will report into a Head of NPD or Innovation Director and may have a NPD Technologist, Process Technologist and a Specifications Technologist reporting into them. They may also work across multiple sites and several customer accounts.
Salary wise the role generally pays between £40,000 to £60,000 depending on regional variance and level of experience.
Berkshire
Berkshire is based in the south east of England, to the west of London. It is renowned for it’s links with the royal family and in recognition of this it was given the title ‘Royal County’ by the Queen in 1958.
Berkshire is extremely popular with visitors, with an array of places to visit, the most famous of which is undoubtedly Windsor Castle. Other popular destinations include the likes of Eton College and Ascot Racecourse.
The largest towns in the county are Reading, Slough, Newbury, Bracknell, Maidenhead, Workingham, Windsor and Sandhurst.
As a county Berkshire is on London’s doorstep, making it extremely popular with commuters, however, there’s also a huge amount of commerce and industry in the county.
The region is particularly well known for being home to some of the UK and the world’s biggest technology and high tech businesses, as well as the headquarters of globally renowned pharmaceutical, fmcg, financial services and automotive organisations.
These include Vodafone, O2, Panasonic, Dell, Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Bayer AG, Reckitt Benckiser, BMW Group and numerous others.
