About Huhtamaki
Founded in 1920 and headquartered in Espoo, Finland, Huhtamaki Group is a key global provider of sustainable packaging solutions for consumers around the world, enabling well-being and convenience. Our innovative products protect on-the-go and on-the-shelf food and beverages, ensuring hygiene and safety, and help prevent food waste. We operate in 35 countries and 81 sites around the world. Our 18,600 employees work to Care, Dare and Deliver to provide smart next generation packaging.

About The Role

We currently have an opportunity for an enthusiastic World Class Operations (WCO) Specialist to join our team based in our manufacturing plant at Preston. This role is a full-time position and has the opportunity to engage with all parts of the operations, driving all operational excellence and continuous improvement initiatives. The core focus on this role is to ensure that the site's operational processes run efficiently, reliably and in line with the world class standards.

Through leadership, coaching, and cross-functional collaboration, the WCO Specialist drives a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement—supporting Huhtamaki’s mission to protect food, people, and the planet. The right candidate will be forward-thinking, proactive, and take initiative, while also being able to multitask and be effective at communicating and influencing across at all levels of the organization.

Your duties will include but not limited to:

Drive business excellence by leading continuous improvement initiatives, developing cost-saving project pipelines, enhancing systems and processes and aligning cross-functional to support world-class performance and long-term results.

Lead and deliver improvement projects by identifying inefficiencies, collaborating with teams to reduce costs, analyzing impact and embedding sustainable new ways of working across operations.

Provide guidance and support to operations teams by prioritizing improvement projects, setting clear goals and applying structured methodologies with defined objectives, milestones and KPI's.

Monitor and report on strategic improvement progress by preparing regular updates, ensuring accurate documentation, and keeping stakeholders and systems aligned and informed.

Drive quality excellence by securing industry accreditations, embedding 'right first time' principles, engaging with customers on quality performance and supporting complaint investigations.

Provide leadership by representing World Class Operations in key decisions, coaching teams in continuous improvement, and role-modelling the company values of Care, Dare and Deliver.

Ensure effective cross-functional collaboration by aligning with key business areas - Training, OH&S, Finance, Quality and Operations - to support project success and information flow.

To succeed in this role, you will need:

Qualifications or a degree in Business or Engineering or a recognised qualification of a similar discipline (Certificate IV or higher)

At least 3 to 5 years’ experience of Lean principles and practices

Six Sigma certification desirable

At least 3 – 5 years’ experience in a Management or Leadership position required

Strong technical affinity; the ability to judge the technical impact of improvements

High standard of written and verbal communication skills

Strong analytical and logical thinking skills in reviewing activities and identifying key actions to deliver improvement

High proficiency using Microsoft Suite (Excel) and computer literacy

Confidence and the ability to implement strategies to influence and impact people at all levels in an organization.

Effective communication skills suitable to people from office to plant floor

Confidence and ability to structure and communicate material effectively in both written and oral forms, including group presentations.

Ability to develop professional relationships within the industry

The ability to negotiate in a commercial and employee relations context.

Benefits:

At Huhtamaki, people are at the heart of everything we do. Joining us means becoming part of a global organisation where you'll collaborate with world-class specialists in sustainability, quality, and continuous improvement. This role offers a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a dynamic manufacturing environment while learning from industry leaders who are shaping the future of packaging worldwide—all guided by our values of Care, Dare, and Deliver.

If this opportunity sounds like your next opportunity, please apply online via the SEEK application link