Our Functions

Finance

Finance plays a pivotal role at National Foods. It reports, monitors and predicts financial performance, plays a proactive role in helping guide the strategic development of the business, provides the controls to protect our assets and the analysis to support decision making. Real life examples include; whether a new product is viable to launch and projected return on investing funds in a new production line in a factory.

The finance function is made up of the following three main groups;

Group Finance – is responsible for management of our cash flow and cash planning, capital and entity structuring, debt management, fund raising and finance risk management. This group also provides a financial advisory role for all major strategic projects and commercial arrangements.

Group Reporting – holds responsibility for monthly management and key performance indicator reporting, statutory reporting and taxation.

Business Performance & Forecasting – provides commercial analysis and advice to designated areas within the business. This group is also responsible for the annual budget process and forecasting cycle.

What Graduate Qualifications do you need? You will have studied Accounting, Economics, Finance or other related studies. The course you have completed will enable you to go onto CPA/CA studies.

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Logistics

Logistics involves combining demand planning with supply planning, and working with our Sales function to ensure we have a fully integrated Sales & Operations Planning process ie. Marry up the customer sales forecasts with the production plans to ensure we have the right volume of product at the right time. Demand Planning captures and interprets customer/consumer demand data and from this communicates operational forecasts. Supply Planning is the consolidation of demand plans to produce commercial inventory, production and material plans ensuring supply is aligned to demand.

In addition Logistics involves the delivery of supplying the finished goods to customers and managing transportation, warehousing and third party provider networks to enable us to reach all of our customers in the most timely and cost effective way.

What Graduate Qualifications do you need? Applicants are welcome from any discipline.

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People & Culture

The success of National Foods depends on the achievements of all our people.  The People & Culture team focuses on developing, implementing and maintaining programs and practices that attract, engage, develop and retain people with the right skills, behaviours and values in the business.  Real life examples include; recruiting graduates, supporting the communications and change process in merging businesses, providing a Leader with the tools to coach a team member, analysing trends and proposing new programs, and contributing to the design & delivery of learning programs.

The People & Culture team is made up of the following groups;

Culture and Change – each of our factories and corporate sites are supported by a Culture and Change partner who provides specialist expertise in championing culture and behaviours, and supporting change within the organisation.

PeopleDirect – the advisors build capability in our Leaders to deliver quality outcomes in our core people processes including; Achievement Planning, Development Review, Remuneration Review, Achievement and Bonus Review. In addition, support Leaders in day to day people related matters and coach Leaders to apply consistent application of our policies and practices.

Resourcing – drives a strategic workforce plan for each division of the business, and team members coach and advise leaders on resourcing strategies to achieve optimal outcomes for all internal and external hiring.  

Leadership Development – is responsible for supporting administration of core leadership and capability programs. 

Other components of the team include workplace relations, capability, health & safety, strategy & insights and people & culture systems.

What Graduate Qualifications do you need? Applications are welcome from any discipline.

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Manufacturing Operations

Manufacturing Operations covers the production element of supply chain, ensuring we have the right volume and mix of quality products made to meet our customers’ needs.  These products must be produced and ready to leave the factory to meet supply chain demands.  The Logistics function then comes in to move the products from the factory to the desired end location at the right time, to ensure customer and consumer requirements are met.

The Manufacturing Operations function is made up of the following groups;

Engineering & Operations - Involves supply planning, production, process, packaging teams and engineers to run the factories around the country and ensure we turn the raw materials into quality finished goods in an efficient and timely manner meeting our customer needs.  They also plan for the future ensuring our production capacity is aligned to our growth and innovation plans.

Risk - Another vital cog in the team is the Risk group which ensures we have the right information, processes and systems in place to manage our risks.  It also ensures we have an integrated quality, safety & environmental management framework in place across the business.  This results in safe workplaces for our people and high quality, consistent products for our consumers, while ensuring a sustainable environment.

What Graduate Qualifications do you need? Ideally you will have a Mechanical, Processing, Manufacturing or Electrical Engineering degree.

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Marketing & Sales

The consumer is the boss of all that we do!

Marketing is all about finding out what our consumers want and translating those needs into plans to develop marketing leading brands, innovative new products to wow our consumers and finding new ways of connecting through winning promotional campaigns. Our brands fall into 5 core categories - milk, fresh dairy, juice, soy beverages and cheese.

Brand Marketing - As a marketer you focus on defining the brand personality and identifying opportunities to grow your brand and category. We are extremely passionate and proud of our brands, all of which are leaders in the category they operate in. We operate in a highly competitive and fast moving market place. The marketers work across the full marketing mix to ensure we continually excite our consumers and maintain leadership positions. You’ll work closely with external agencies that specialise in advertising, research, PR and design and harness the creative inputs to bring the brand plans to life and then work with most functions within our business to bring those programs to life and evaluate their performance.

Consumer Innovation and Insights – this team is focused on building an indepth understanding of our consumers and shoppers attitudes, behaviours and relationships with our brands, products and categories in general so we can bring these insights to life through our innovation and marketing programmes.

Customer Marketing - is a diverse team covering Store shelf plans and identifying opportunities to bring the category vision to life, Category Marketing which partners with the Marketing & Sales teams to bring the relevant Category Vision to life in the market place, Retail Presence & Promotions which develops solutions to excite and entice our consumers and Retail Partners at the point of purchase.

Our Sales function is responsible for selling the company’s range of milk, juice, cheese and dairy food products to a wide and diverse range of customers nationally. In fact, we sell to more than 55,000 customers around Australia, ranging from multi million dollar deals with the major supermarket chains such as Woolworth’s, Coles and Aldi to the corner milk bar. In between are customers such as Petrol & Convenience stores, hospitals, restaurants, schools, coffee chains, airlines, caterers, fruit shops and delis – to name just a few. Sales is not just about gaining new customers but also focusing on long term win-win partnerships with our customers, analysing past performance and identifying emerging trends. The Sales Team is made up of;

National Accounts – this team services and are responsible for developing and maintaining strategic relationships with the large supermarkets and national chains or franchises.

State based - teams who look after the huge range of individual businesses around Australia.

Operational Field Sales – liaises directly with the individual stores and customers across Australia ensuring our range is supported at a store level, promotions are effectively delivered in store and shelf space maximised. The State Field Teams for our Convenience and Food Service customers (ie all the customers listed above who are not a supermarket chain) call on these customers in person, merchandise, build off location displays, organise the delivery/retrieval of fridges, minimise out of stock products and most importantly champion our brands against our competitor offerings. The majority of the brands and products we deliver within the Convenience and Food Service channels are distributed by our ‘distributor’ network. We have 1400+ contracted Milk & Juice distributors nationally and these individual operators play a key role in ensuring the delivery of our great brands, week in week out.

What Graduate Qualifications do you need? All degrees welcome. Business, Marketing would be a plus.

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Research & Development

Research & Development is a key part of the Marketing group. They are responsible for product development in our business which includes delivering new products to market as well as productivity improvements. Closely partnering with Marketing and Operations, the group is involved in the full new product development cycle and provides specialist services in product, process and new technologies development, nutrition and packaging.

What Graduate Qualifications do you need? You may have studied Food Science, Chemical Engineering, Nutrition or related degree.

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