Six-figure edge

As a highly-paid and successful interim technical director with broad experience in technical, product development and quality assurance management roles, Roland Froebel symbolises the opportunities in food and drink processing.

So the reaction of his own daughter (a management graduate) when he suggested a career in the industry must have come as something of a shock. "She looked at me as if I'd grown another head," he says.

In fact, he points out, the moment simply brought home literally a truth that most in the industry have known about for years.

"The industry's not seen as being 'sexy'," he argues. Whether this is cause or effect, he adds, there are not enough high-calibre food technology degree courses in the UK. And what courses do exist are not attracting sufficient students to meet industry's needs.

"Are we generating a new wave of food technologists?" Froebel asks. "No, we aren't. There's too little young blood with a desire to be in the industry."

At the same time, the last three decades have seen dramatic changes to the technical and product development roles. Froebel cites just one example from the quality side: "I don't remember a single audit from the 1980s.

And during the 1990s, you could count them on the fingers of one hand." That all changed with the advent of the British Retail Consortium and retailers' own audits.

A strong track record in food science may still be a prerequisite, but manufacturers' wish-lists are extending a long way beyond that. "Budgetary control is now enormous," says Froebel. "You can't come in as a 'boffin' anymore. You have to be multi-faceted, and that includes having financial skills."

At recruitment consultant Jarvis Johnson, business operations manager Frederika Roberts accentuates the positive when it comes to change. "The unglamorous traditional image of the food industry all hairnets and wellies is changing," she says. "Technical managers no longer work only on the factory floor. There's greater visibility, more interaction with customers, and more blurring of areas of responsibility."

The pressure can be considerable, especially in own-label dominated categories such as chilled foods. According to Froebel, the retailers are increasingly demanding continuity in the form of a single, senior point of contact. "The technical controller should be someone they value, know and like," he says. "If you get a good relationship going, it's worth its weight in gold."

But in rare cases, the retailer influence that helps to create these posts can also play a leading role in turfing individuals out of them. Where personal relationships break down with retailer technologists, for instance, suppliers have been known to replace their own technical contact.

Overall, the tendency has been for retailers to demand that supplier technical departments jump through increasing numbers of ever-higher hoops. Yet, despite the supply chain generating many of its own problems in terms of attracting and retaining technical staff, individuals with the ability and will to progress can turn this issue to their own advantage.

"Salaries for permanent employment in this area are increasing," says Froebel. "Many of those applying for these posts don't have either the skillset or the motivation, so companies have been increasing the salaries on offer to attract applicants of a higher calibre."

Technical director at Findus Group company Pinney's Darren Gedge agrees: "For the last 10 years or so, the numbers studying food science and related subjects have been falling off. There's a definite lack of technical people of the right calibre, and you have to offer them more than you might have done previously."

Even over the last year, says Froebel, the figures tempting a head of technical in the chilled sector have increased significantly to at least £65,000, but commonly £80,000 £100,000. In higher-risk categories such as fish and seafood, six-figure salaries are almost the norm, Froebel says.

Those with the right skills and attitude can progress more rapidly. But, as Gedge points out, vacancies for technical directors do not come up that often. "To get to the top, ambitious managers need to move around the industry, from category to category, gaining experience of how to manage people and how different factories work," he advises.

He recommends three years as a good length of time to remain with a company before moving on to better things. This allows a manager to progress, for instance, from single-site to multi-site operations, and into senior technical management positions where other junior managers are reporting to him or her.

The growing influence of retailers has helped to create some newer, specialised food industry roles, too. Specification technologists, for instance, may work on anything from raw materials to finished product. But as Froebel explains, it is at the retail end that the proliferation of stock keeping units (SKUs) and their descriptions has really occurred.

"There may be hundreds of SKUs, each one needing a retailer specification," he reports. "Some of those could be 60 pages long. It's all electronic, and the technologist needs to use proprietary retailer systems."

Other technical-related areas which are growing in importance include waste management and (if that sort of thing lights your fire) customer complaints. Complaints, whatever their source, need to be logged against key performance indicators, investigated and responded to, says Froebel, adding: "It can be a job in its own right."

Theoretically at least, the roll-out of retailer-driven standards has led to greater uniformity across the industry. Despite this, and because of variations between categories and in the level of own-label penetration, the differences between companies can be more important than the similarities.

Many lament, for example, the way in which new product development has largely been co-opted as a commercial function in many operations. This has too often led to a disconnect between customer-facing development teams and those with a broader technical understanding, the argument goes. This can be particularly detrimental at the scaling-up stage.

But Nadene Simpson-Still's experience at Fox's Biscuits, part of Northern Foods, demonstrates that this alleged disconnect is far from being universal. As Fox's product development manager, she says she is involved at all stages of the launch process from concept to shelf.

According to Roberts at Jarvis Johnson, in many cases it is the very commercialisation of the product development role that has broadened it out and made it more attractive. "You're no longer required to be a foodie, pure and simple, locked away from view," she says. "You need to be more commercially minded, including being able to present to retailers when necessary."

Finally, as Froebel's own example illustrates, filling interim technical roles can be a perfectly viable and lucrative career move in its own right.

"In my opinion, that's the way the industry's going to move," he says. "Those who are 'interimming' now are generally the better ones. It usually involves being away from home, but that's probably the only downside.

Otherwise, someone is paying you over the odds to learn something new which you can then apply elsewhere."

The interim technical remit is usually a short-term problem-solving one, with its own immediate satisfactions. There are no distractions with politics or empire-building, argues Froebel.