Bakkavor Desserts Newark, claimed to be Europe’s largest producer of fresh cream cakes, will recruit an additional 370 new employees to join its current team of 1,700 staff.
The manufacturer said that the recruitment had been driven by the popularity of desserts such as fresh choux buns and trifles. The business planned to introduce a new night shift and to boost its current day shifts at its Newark Industrial Estate site to cover the increased demand.
New positions included a range of roles, including: manufacturing technicians, food handlers, section leaders and section managers. The site produces 190M packs of desserts a year such as éclairs, doughnuts, tarts and slices, fruit and chocolate trifles and profiterole stacks.
100 new employees
Meanwhile, Freshcook, also part of Bakkavor, planned to recruit more than 100 new employees at its factory in Holbeach St Marks in south Lincolnshire.
Freshcook produces a wide range of chilled products, ranging from high-end ready meals through to delicatessen items for food retailer Marks & Spencer.
Increased demand has meant that the Holbeach business would be boosting its current 600-strong staff team with new operative roles across day and night shifts as well as a number of management roles.
‘Skilled and dedicated team’
The manufacturing division’s business human resources manager Will Naylor said: “Our recruitment drive at Freshcook is a great reflection of how well the team is performing and the success of new product ranges. This is an exciting time for the company, and we are pleased to be recruiting to boost the already skilled and dedicated team at Freshcook.”
Talking about the recruitment in Newark, Nigel Butterworth, head of site operations at Bakkavor Desserts, said: “This is an exciting period of growth for our business. We are creating additional capacity to meet increased customer demand for our range of products and are looking for people with a can-do attitude to join our friendly team across day, evening and night shifts with a range of skills and experience.”
For the very latest jobs in UK food and drink manufacturing, visit FoodManJobs.
Bakkavor’s year so far
- May: Bakkavor predicted trading conditions will remain “challenging”
- March: Revealed plans to recruit 45 apprentices across the UK
- February: Posted 2% like-for-like revenue growth to £1.65bn for its financial year ended December 26, 2015
- January: Bakkavor founders Lydur and Augst Gudmundsson team up with one of the world’s largest hedge fund firms to buy out Icelandic institutions in a £163M deal
- January: More than 300 jobs threatened after the loss a significant amount of business from Tesco, claimed the GMB union