Based in SRUC’s Dairy Research & Innovation Centre in Dumfries and working with a wide range of project partners and stakeholders across South-West Scotland and Cumbria, the purpose of this post is overall direction of an exciting new Strength in Places Project “Digital Dairy Value-Chain for SW Scotland and Cumbria”. SRUC is leading this 5-year, £21.3 million project along with University of Strathclyde, University of the West of Scotland, CENSIS, First Milk Limited, Lactalis McLelland Limited, Kendal Nutricare Limited, Cows & Co Group Limited, National Milk Records PLC and SmartSTEMs.
Aiming to create more than 600 new jobs and add £60 million to the annual output of the local economy, the Digital Dairy Value-Chain project will be a considerable boost to Cumbria and South-West Scotland. It will strengthen and decarbonise the area’s dairy industry, which every year produces 1.9 billion litres of milk. The project will provide world-class opportunities for research and business innovation in advanced, sustainable, high-value dairy processing. It will work with the dairy industry to develop and introduce technologies for sensing and data handling, as well as infrastructure to support innovation and growth for local businesses. It will deliver advanced manufacturing processes to create a fully integrated and traceable supply chain as well as help businesses to develop new products and explore new markets.
Within SRUC, the project will work alongside, and extend the activity of, SRUC’s Dairy Research & Innovation Centre. The appointee will be a member of the Centre Leadership Team, along with Professor Richard Dewhurst (Professor of Ruminant Nutrition & Production Systems and Head of Dairy Research & Innovation Centre) and Professor John Newbold (Professor of Dairy Nutrition and Head of Global Climate Emergency Challenge Centre). They will provide leadership across partners and manage staff involved in managing budgets, communications, monitoring and evaluation, and administration of a local grant scheme for the whole programme. Additionally, they will manage staff involved in dairy product innovation from pilot research through to scale-up and commercialisation.
The successful candidate will hold a PhD or equivalent in agri-food and be proficient with systems for managing programmes, budgets, milestones and deliverables. You have have in-depth understanding of dairy production and processing industries as well as a clear vision of the challenges and opportunities for the dairy value chain. Substantial experience of managing large multi-site projects is essential as well as project evaluation experience and managing a large team with diverse technical and management roles.
For more information on the opportunity, please visit
www.aspenpeople.co.uk/srucdairy. For a confidential discussion, please contact either Donogh O'Brien or Katharine Price on 0141 212 7555.