Abie is based in our County Durham site in Consett – formerly part of Symington’s – and started in 2012 as an NPD (New Product Development) Technician on a three month contract following a number of summers working on the production line whilst a student at university. She says:
Our Consett site in County Durham is a specialist centre for ambient ready meals, and it’s where we produce a wide range of products including gravy, stock, sauces, custard and soup. We have lots of flexible packaging formats, including pouches, trays and pots with sleeves and our site delivers convenience and quality across both Princes and customer own-brand lines.
I first started working here in 2009 during the summer holidays while I was a maths student at Lancaster University. Back then I was working on the production line and it was a good chance to meet people and to build relationships. After graduating, when a three-month contract role came up as an NPD Technician, I applied and was delighted to get it.
It’s a fast-paced business and you quickly learn that you need to go with the flow. Over the years I’ve had really good training and I’m pleased with how my career has progressed. I’ve worked my way up from an NPD Technician to an NPD Technologist and now I’m NPD and Quality Manager. I love my role and I’ve made such good friends here.
In my current role I oversee the entire lifecycle of food and drink manufacturing at our Consett site, guiding products from initial kitchen concepts to full-scale factory production, while ensuring strict compliance with food safety, taste, and quality and compliance standards.
There’s not really any such thing as a typical day but outside of attending lots of meetings, I’ll be looking at the technical side of my role which could include an unannounced audit review, a review of the numbers from the day before or looking at any quality issues we might have.
On the NPD side I could be attending product tastings such as working on a new custard, brandy sauce or gravy for Christmas time 18 months ahead.
Another important element of my role is analysing and reviewing the nutritional content of our product briefs to ensure they’re in keeping with what’s required for a healthy balanced diet. That means I’m looking really closely at protein, fat, sugar and fibre levels.
I manage our NPD team and it’s exciting to work on products from concept to launch. We do lots of research and identify trends and test concepts from the ground up, before creating bespoke recipes and scalable packaging solutions.
One of my proudest moments was working on a baby food product for a well-known brand. We’d never done baby food before and we developed a meatball and vegetable puree range for the client. It was so exciting to see it on the shelf and also featured in Cosmopolitan magazine, knowing that I’d been so closely involved with its development from idea creation and legislative compliance to kitchen development and then full factory production.
Another achievement I’m extremely proud about is being part of the team responsible for achieving a Grade 5 Tesco Audit, which is the highest possible achievement a manufacturing or packing site can earn. For a site like ours – and knowing that the audit is always unannounced – achieving this rating indicates full, routine compliance with Tesco’s stringent standards for food quality, safety, legality and ethical sourcing. We were the first Symington’s site to achieve this and we’ve done it four years in a row now. It feels great.