Research & Development Assistant

About the job Research & Development Assistant

Key purpose:

Our company is currently looking for an R&D assistant to lead product development projects within the wet and dry pet food department, ensuring the projects are launched within the required specification, on time, of high quality, and at target cost in collaboration with all relevant departments. This person will also be required to conduct the least cost formulation of pet food.

Duties and responsibilities:

• Daily reformulation of pet food
• Assist with the investigation of yield variances
• Identify new raw material sources and follow the process of approval
• Creating raw material specifications
• Creating finished product specifications
• Assist with document requirements for exports
• Conduct internal audits and supplier audits when required
• Registration of products with the Department of Agriculture
• Coordinate and drive multi-disciplinary teams (marketing, commercial, planning production, etc) through idea generation, product development, and product testing
• Coordinate NPD meetings on new product development to ensure all core and peripheral aspects have been considered and planned (e.g. packaging, equipment requirements, plant layout, etc)
• Test and challenge the feasibility of NPD proposals
• Drive ongoing collaboration with customer and marketing teams to identify a robust pipeline of new products
• Ensure legal compliance with all new product development in terms of ingredients and labeling requirements.
• Drive cost-saving initiatives about formulations and reduction of complexity with regards to raw materials and processing
• Work with production about process improvement / improving process efficiencies
• Facilitate product evaluations on current products with production teams and marketing including benchmarking with competitors' products
• Assist with product queries and complaints to stay abreast of possible problem areas and concerns and to assist in problem-solving within production facilities
• Engage regularly with customers (internal/external) regarding issues and requirements and provide feedback on how the business is meeting set requirements.

Qualifications and experience:

• BSc (Agric) Animal Science or Equivalent Btech
• Must be able to register as a professional natural scientist
• Minimum 3 years experience in a similar role in a food manufacturing environment
• Proven track record with experience in the development of new products
• Sound knowledge of HACCP, FSSC22000
• Experience in working with various product trials simultaneously