Job Req ID:  5343
Date:  Feb 10, 2026
Tradebe Site:  Tradebe Sunderland
Location: 

Sunderland, SND, GB

Department:  Operations
Business Line:  Life Sciences

Plant Manager

Description: 

What will you do? Make an impact!

Do you have what it takes?

What’s in for you?

  1. Profile

The Plant Manager will possess a comprehensive range of chemical plant operational knowledge, ideally with suitable qualifications to provide a wide range of effective support.

 

The role will fully support the daily  operations of the Production department. The role will require strong people skills with experience of training and assessing competence.

 

Experience and knowledge gained working within top tier CoMAH regulations including corresponding environmental, health and safety legislative requirements is fundamental to this role.

 

  1. Responsibilities

To be responsible to the Production Manager for:

  1. Compliance with Health and Safety Regulations and with all relevant Quality Assurance and Environmental Procedures to the production and support operations
  2. Promote a positive health and safety culture by maintaining audit ready sites through sustaining good housekeeping standards, wearing correct PPE, reporting any observed near misses and isolating any unsafe situations
  3. Work closely with the  Logistics Manager ensuring that production and logistical plans are fully communicated and followed by operational teams
  4. Work with the Business Processes team ensuring the management of operational Key Performance Indicators for production rates and yields
  5. Work closely with shift teams to identify, explore and deliver 'World Class' levels of performance by continuous improvement of the site to improve aspects of safety, environmental, cost and operational performance
  6. Aid the development of an open culture and create an environment for continuous improvement through empowerment and mutual challenging of performance; support CI opportunities from initial reviews right through to plant trials
  7. Provide input to plant occupancy and efficiency reviews especially to reduce the percentage of non-value added time and costs
  8. Ensure good control of site costs with regards to production consumables, waste disposal costs, reagents and utility consumption
  9. Coach and assess production staff as part of their personnel development including identification of any additional training needs including the identification and management of any underperformance as per Tradebe procedures
  10. Manage the operational team staffing levels ensuring sufficient and competent manning is available for holiday, sickness and training cover in order to operate process plant safely and fulfil business requirements
  11. Manage the issuing of all Permit to Work on site ensuring suitable control measures and isolations are defined by production staff. Issue high level hot and confined space entry permits as required to Tradebe procedures
  12. Ensure all operational site testing, monitoring and control of site emissions as per consent agreements are correctly completed and adhered to. Additionally that effective communication channels and approvals are used for any adjustments and or deviations
  13. Review the performance and output of the production team ensuring the safe, standardised and efficient operation of all plant and equipment as per process operating instructions, quality requirements and technical documentation
  14. Support any investigations as required in response to customer complaints, incidents or accidents and follow up with appropriate actions to prevent reoccurrences
  15. Ensure all Non-Conforming materials coming into site or produced are correctly managed and as appropriate accepted or rejected as per  Tradebe procedures
  16. Manage shift teams making sure that all equipment defects and alarms are reported, ensuring such issues are appropriately managed, i.e. all unsafe items are suitably isolated
  17. Support to the engineering team to aid with design input, task / risk assessments, and to lead production commissioning / snagging of reinstated or newly installed equipment
  18. Management of change (MoC) must be followed and used to control equipment modifications and procedural / personnel changes, including review of requests impacting production
  19. Responsible for ensuring all wastes generated on site are managed efficiently and disposed of in a timely fashion in line with current legislation and good practise
  20. To be available out of hours to provide a reasonable level of answers to production queries from site
  21. Assist Site management in all aspects of their work and deputise production related duties in peoples absence

 

3.0       Role
  1. Work closely supporting the Production Manager to ensure the site is operated in a manner conductive to good Health, Safety & Environmental practices, paying particular attention to housekeeping, completion of site checks and performing routine audits
  2. Housekeeping standards are maintained around the plant in accordance with best practises, with particular focus to compliance with DSEAR
  3. To provide technical support for operational teams whilst ensuring they are following all process operating instructions, test methods and technical documents to safely and efficiently operate plant and processes whilst complying with all health, safety and environmental requirements
  4. Establish that all regular routines have sufficient written instructions and are regularly reviewed keeping them up to date to include the latest available data, guidance and best practises
  5. Responsible for operational teams completing checks and documentation to ensure that plant / processes are safely and efficiently operated whilst complying with all health, safety and environmental requirements
  6. Working with the Logistics & Business Processes Managers to achieve efficient and optimised performance of production plants / equipment whilst ensuring all are operated safely as per operating instructions
  7. Manage operational teams in conjunction with Production Manager to utilise staff whilst maintaining operational requirements to minimise delays while materials are loaded /unloaded
  8. Ensure in-process test equipment is correctly operated as per test methods and maintained / calibrated using suitably prepared lab standards
  9. Support development plans for the implementation of Lean and Good Manufacturing Practice initiatives such as 5S and value stream mapping to reduce non value added activities
  10. Maximise the site efficiency through CI initiatives for production plant and equipment to increase profitability and efficiency whilst ensuring operational teams follow approved standard operating instructions
  11. Utilise operational teams using the PROUD ethos to review and assess risks associated with everyday tasks and operations, ensuring that suitable and up to date assessments are in place
  12. Managing operational teams to provide effective stock control over consumables and reagents to safeguard uninterrupted processing whilst balancing against inventory levels and cost
  13. Manage day to day chemical reagents used on site ensuring that they all have valid COSHH assessments, control measures are followed and that they reflect actual methods used
  14. Regularly review non-productive plant time aiming to provide suitable robust change over preparation to avoid contamination, or whilst handing over for maintenance work
  15. Establishing and maintaining robust instructions to meet specific requirements with regards to performing suitable cleaning and preparation of plant / equipment prior to changing over customer materials (avoiding any contamination)
  16. Suitable cleaning, isolations and preparation of plant and equipment through specifying adequate draining and cleaning prior to handing over for maintenance work
  17. Compliance to the site water effluent discharge procedures and controls, ensuring operators perform required sampling, analysis requests, transfers and checks
  18. Manage the VOC scrubbing system through compliance to site procedures and controls, ensuring operators perform required checks, sampling and actions
  19. To make sure that all consumables, reagents and PPE stocks are maintained, with orders requested and progressed in a timely fashion to maintain suitable stock levels on site
  20. Development of operational teams with associated progression plans. Aid development of operational team through the completion of observed competency assessments, identification of further training needs, in-house training packages and the presenting of appropriate tool box talks
  21. Encourage good communications and reporting from shift teams to provide timely feedback on shift activities, any handover faults, breakdowns, isolations in place, accidents, incidents or near misses that have occurred, including any alarms activated
  22. Raise Management of Change (MOC) requests in connection with operational changes or proposed CI work; completing appropriate sections to fully assess proposed changes. The MOC process must be used to control all equipment and procedural changes
  23. Follow document control procedure to support operational teams ensuring that only current approved versions are used, and that all documents are periodically reviewed
  24. Assist Production Manager to perform plant care audits to visually check plant equipment, including the reporting of any faults onto the maintenance system
  25. In the event of a Major Accident Hazard scenario if the most senior person on site to act as the Site Incident Controller (SIC) or provide support to the SIC in the event of the emergency services being called to site

 

4.0       Essential Skills

  1. Strong leadership, networking, coaching and communication skills particularly across all levels of a manufacturing / chemical processing environment
  2. Experience managing teams within an operational environment
  3. Energetic in driving an effective Continuous Improvement Culture
  4. Ability to develop and motivate teams
  5. Ability to achieve business objectives
  6. Able to focus on maintaining high quality standards
  7. Ability to use and develop business systems for manufacturing systems
  8. Extensive experience in using Microsoft office packages
  9. Ability to work under pressure
  10. Demonstrable influencing skills
  11. Excellent communication skills at all levels
  12. An ability to solve problems and define resolutions in a structured manner
  13. Able to travel both nationally and internationally to other parts of organisation to share best practice and drive alignment

 

This job description is not intended to be all inclusive. Employee may perform other related duties as negotiated to meet the on-going need of the business.