We know that having the right knowledge, skills, and insights is crucial to advancing your career. That’s why we’re launching Inside Track, an new masterclass series designed to give you an in-depth look at the key skills needed to progress in different functions across the meat and food industry.
From commercial and operations to technical and marketing, we’re bringing you real-life insights from industry leaders who’ve been there, done it, and are ready to share what it takes to succeed.
We kick off with Chantelle Burdett, Head Of Site Operations, Sofina Foods Europe
Chantelle joined Sofina in February 2021, initially working at the company’s Malton site in the value added department. Since then, she has made a real impact in the business, and has more recently risen to Head Of Site Operations. And we're here to ask her your burning questions!
This is your opportunity to gleam insights, knowledge and wisdom from Chantelle, the youngest person to ever run a site at Sofina. We'll be discussing her career journey, but also coering the key skills and knowledge that you need in order to lead a team and a site successfully. Chantelle will be sharing her knowledge on:
This session will be led by your questions, so when registering please include your question, or a topic that you'd like Chantelle to talk about.
This session is ideal for anyone working in or aspiring to an operational leadership role within the meat, food, or retail industries. It’s relevant if:
Head of Operations Added Value (Malton site), Sofina
Worked in the FMCG for over 17yrs now started at aged 18, working from the factory floor upwards.
4 years in the meat industry, prior 11 years in readymeals to Operations manager and then 18months Tofoo Co as Manufacturing Manager.
4 years at Sofina has seen me moving up and across multiple sites, running our Hull Plant for just over two years, which I played a pivotal part in turning an underperforming site around, which then landed a promotion to go run the added value site in Malton, which is our largest pork plant in the organisation.
Women of the year for manufacturing and processing at the WIMA 2024.
In the 3 progressive roles I have concurred in my 4 years at Sofina, I have developed a site leadership team of 10 people of which none existed 2 years ago!The site has delivered £8M cost saving by working together with 1 common goal. We have produced 100 million pigs in blankets versus previous year of 75 million and production will finish 4 weeks earlier than last year saving a huge ElM.Moving the site from 50% service level to 99% and maintained it for 10 months.Invested £1M across the plant with less than 1.5-year payback and delivered it all on time and in full.i have taken a site with zero yield reporting (we were flying blind!) to a weekly disciplined / accountable yield regime (this has already delivered a 2% yield improvement). Along with no yield reporting data the site also had no visibility to labour reporting, given the disciplined and accountable approach I have been able to steer the site in a direction to reduce head count and improve the tonnage across the lines by 35% increase.Employee engagement survey results were at an all-time low when I joined the site, to understand the people's frustrations and needs/wants was one of my key objectives, because I work for my people. The feed-back from the employees gave me direction on how I could increase moral on site, so I then set up a site team called project pride - which we then invested in areas to increase moral, naturally this saw us retain our people and saw that people wanted to join our business.