About the position
Key Resposibilities
- Develop and manage the swine feed portfolio (including pre-starters, starters, growers, finishers, and sow diets).
- Lead new product development in collaboration with nutrition, procurement, and marketing teams.
- Formulate and optimize rations and premixes in line with nutritional requirements, raw material availability, and performance goals.
- Support the sales and technical teams with on-farm problem-solving and complaint resolution.
- Analyse production and performance data to identify opportunities for improvement and differentiation.
- Conduct competitor benchmarking and market intelligence gathering.
- Deliver technical training to internal sales teams and external customers.
- Collaborate with R&D teams locally and globally for innovation and best practices.
Nutrition
Manage the physical and nutritional specifications of pig products by:
- Monitoring and documenting feed production in line with legislation.
- Product registrations with the Department of Agriculture.
- Define standards for physical quality and feed structure for each feed mill and also monitoring these quality standards by visiting mills regularly.
- Manage the requests for Standard Special Products (SSP’s) for pigs. Approve these for production when required.
- Investigate and analyze customer complaints in accordance with the Customer Action Requests (CAR) and Non-Conformance Requests (NCR) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s). Both for the market and production.
- Management of the pig feed ranges and individual products:
- Nutritional specifications of the standard feed ranges
- Nutritional specifications of custom diets, concentrates and macro packs.
- Review Global R&D reports for application in local feed ranges.
- Set up and manage local product trials if required.
- Frequent Product Manager meetings with the International Product Manager and the Formulations Department.
- Writing of technical articles for local and international company newsletters.
- Networking with:
- Breeding companies
- Veterinarians and animal health organisations
- Suppliers of feed additives and enzymes
- Customers, AFMA Technical Committee, AFMA Regulatory Committee
- Attending technical meetings and conferences where relevant.
- Manage raw material bounds to help realize margin budget.
- Create and maintain technical database (Library).
- Coordinate visits from International Pig Product Manager.
Purchase
Supporting and assisting Purchasing Department with:
- Decisions on specialised raw materials such as premixes, animal by-products, oils and grains for nutritional quality, physical quality, stability, and trustworthiness of supplier when required.
- In the quality audits of suppliers when required.
Sales
Provide nutritional support to the sales team:-
- By giving commercial answers and information to sales staff and customers.
- Do desk research if required.
- Give training to sales staff as required.
- Technical legal compliance support for advertising materials such as leaflets, brochures and bags.
- Assist with trouble shooting on farms when required.
- Formulate complete diets, concentrates and macro packs for special markets. Sell and support these products.
- Collect and analyze nutritional information and products on competitors.
- Monitor and analyze data on the technical and economic performance of our products and those of competitors in the field.
- Maintain Pig Sector plans in coordination with Sales and the International Product Manager
Production
Assist Production by:
- Investigate, when required, production matters concerning:
product variations in raw materials, nutrients, physical quality, ext.
- Maintain the contamination protocols in conjunction with the Quality Manager. This will include updated contamination tables and production sequencing.
- Recoding of damaged or returned product into redress, sweepings or into another product code.
Marketing
Assist Marketing by:
- Planning with the Sales Team to write 2 articles each during the year on agreed topics.
- Providing information required to update the Website – product profiles and articles.
- Providing information for social media posts.
- Planning farmers days.
- Supporting student days.
Minimum Requirements:
Knowledge, Qualifications & Experience
- BSc Agric / BSc Animal Science (Minimum) in animal husbandry
- MSc in Animal Nutrition (Advantageous)
- Possession of a valid code 08/EB drivers license
- Registered as an Animal Nutritionist (SANASP, [URL Removed]
- 5 Years’ experience in a Swine Nutrition & Feed formulation
- Strong Understanding of the South African feed market, including raw materials dynamic
- Hands on on-farm experience in managing swine health, performance and growth challenges
- Practical experience with formulation software (eg. format, Bestmix, Brill)
- Ability to troubleshoot and resolve technical complaints related to nutrition, feed quality and on-farm performance.
Desired Skills:
- BSc Agric/BSc Animal Science
- MSc in Animal Nutrition
- Animal Nutritionist
