Head of Operations (Animal Feeds) & Grain Crushing

About the role

Career Directions Limited is hiring a Head of Operations for its Animal Feeds and Grain Crushing department in Nakuru, Kenya. The role provides strategic leadership and end-to-end management of the feed mill, integrating production, engineering, quality and feed safety, warehousing and supply chain to deliver safe, nutritionally compliant, traceable and cost-effective animal feed. Fluency in Gujarati or Hindi is mandatory.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and run the annual operating plan, aligning capacity, raw materials, formulations and demand, and report performance and risks to management.
• Oversee daily feed production (grinding, batching, mixing, pelleting, cooling, screening, packaging) and keep production on schedule with minimal downtime and contamination.
• Ensure compliance with feed regulations and quality standards, oversee raw-material inspection, testing and traceability, and maintain audit readiness.
• Coordinate with Procurement and Supply Chain for raw materials and packaging, and keep inventory controlled and accurate.
• Oversee preventive maintenance of feed-mill machinery and utilities, and identify asset improvement and capital investment opportunities.
• Control production costs, energy, labour, yield and material wastage, and drive continuous improvement.
• Promote workplace safety, PPE, machine guarding, lockout/tagout and environmental and waste-management standards.
• Maintain accurate production, quality, maintenance and inventory records in SAP, with full batch and lot traceability.
• Monitor operational KPIs, coordinate with Quality, Procurement, Supply Chain, Finance, Commercial and Technical teams, and lead production, engineering, quality, warehouse and technical teams.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Animal Nutrition, Animal Science, Feed Technology, Food Science, Chemical/Mechanical/Production Engineering, Manufacturing, Operations Management or a related field; a Master's or MBA is an advantage.
• 10-15 years of progressive manufacturing or process-operations experience in animal feeds, grain milling, food processing, edible oils or a similar high-volume FMCG environment.
• At least 5 years in a senior operational leadership role covering production, engineering, quality, cost and people performance.
• Fluency in Gujarati or Hindi is mandatory.

Required skills

• Feed-mill process control and feed safety, with hands-on knowledge of batching, grinding, mixing, pelleting, packing and dispatch.
• Preventive maintenance, cost per metric tonne, yield and energy management.
• SAP / ERP experience, strongly preferred.
• Lean manufacturing, root-cause analysis, SHEQ compliance and combustible-dust control.