Materials Manager

Location: Leicestershire

Materials Manager

This is a hands-on Materials Manager role for someone ready to take broader ownership and improve how a busy manufacturing operation really works.

You’ll join a fast-paced FMCG manufacturing site with multiple production units and take responsibility for all materials from supplier through to point of use. The environment is complex, NPD is constant, and materials decisions have a direct impact on service, waste, and working capital.

The role is about uplift, not just control. Systems exist and do work, but processes are manual, adoption is inconsistent, and ways of working have not evolved. Your impact will come from improving how people use systems, tightening material flows, and introducing better structure and discipline without over complicating things.

You’ll lead a team of four Material Planners who know the business well but need development, challenge, and stronger ways of working. Bringing a continuous improvement mindset, questioning “we’ve always done it this way”, and raising capability across people, process, and systems is central to the role.

You’ll work closely with Central Procurement, Planning, Finance, and site teams. This is not a buyer role, but you will be expected to challenge ordering logic, minimum order quantities, and supply decisions where they create waste or don’t reflect true demand.

This role could suit someone stepping up into their first Materials Manager position, provided you’ve had some level of people management responsibility at some point in your career, even if that was managing a single person or acting as a stand-in.
It may also suit someone currently titled Production Planning Manager or Supply Planning Manager, provided you’ve had genuine ownership of materials in an FMCG manufacturing environment.

This is not a logistics, warehousing, or stock control role. Candidates without hands-on FMCG manufacturing materials experience will not be considered