Continuous Improvement & Transformation Assosiate

Cooke Hellas is building a lasting culture of continuous improvement. Across our hatcheries, farms, processing plants and support functions, our people generate a steady flow of good ideas for working better: simplifying a process, improving yield, reducing waste and energy use, sharpening how we buy, and making better use of technology. The Continuous Improvement & Transformation Associate exists to give those ideas structure, visibility and momentum.

Working directly with the CEO and the Senior Directors, the Associate builds and maintains a single, well-run pipeline of cost reduction, efficiency and improvement initiatives — making sure each one has a clear owner, a realistic benefit and a path to delivery. The aim is to make the company more efficient and more competitive, so that the value we create can be reinvested in our sites, our products and our people.

This is a high-visibility, full-time role and an ongoing operating rhythm rather than a one-off project. It is designed for a recent, dynamic MBA graduate who is technology- and AI-savvy, highly organised, and eager to learn the business from the ground up while building a fast track toward senior leadership.

Scope of the Improvement Agenda

Initiatives in the pipeline focus on how the work gets done — for example:

• Process simplification and elimination of duplicated or low-value activity


• Yield, quality and biological performance improvements


• Energy, water, feed and materials efficiency


• Procurement, supplier terms and total cost of ownership


• Maintenance, logistics and asset utilisation


• Automation, digitisation and AI-enabled ways of working


• Waste reduction and sustainability gains that also improve cost performance

Key Responsibilities

Improvement Pipeline (Core)

• Build and own the master pipeline of cost reduction, efficiency and improvement initiatives across all functions, keeping it current, complete and reliable


• Track each initiative’s status, owner and sponsor, benefit identified, benefit validated and benefit realised


• Keep leadership informed on progress, and surface initiatives that need support, resources or a decision to keep moving


• Bring consistency to how ideas are captured, sized and prioritised, so the best opportunities get the attention they deserve

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Work alongside the CEO, the Senior Directors and their teams to source, scope and validate new improvement opportunities within their areas


• Organise and run the regular improvement review cadence: prepare agendas, materials and follow-up notes, and ensure every initiative has a clear, accountable sponsor


• Connect Production, Commercial, Processing, Procurement, Finance and other functions to keep initiatives moving and to resolve cross-team dependencies


• Make it easy for colleagues at every level to put forward ideas and see what happens to them

Technology, Reporting & Insight

• Build and maintain an executive dashboard covering initiative status, benefit run-rate, sponsorship and financial impact, using AI and automation to accelerate analysis and reporting


• Identify and pilot new technologies and AI tools that improve how the company plans, measures and delivers improvement


• Prepare clear, well-evidenced presentations and reports for the CEO and Senior Directors

Improvement Projects

• Own selected improvement workstreams end-to-end, from framing and validation through to delivered, measurable results


• Conduct benchmarking and best-practice research — including how technology and AI are applied elsewhere in aquaculture, food production and adjacent industries — to inform leadership decisions

Organisational Support

• Help draft and coordinate internal communications on the improvement agenda from the CEO’s office, recognising the teams behind successful initiatives


• Support culture and engagement activity that encourages practical, everyday improvement thinking across all sites


• Act as a general-purpose problem solver for ad hoc requests from the CEO and Senior Directors

Profile Requirements

Experience

• Recent MBA graduate (3–5 years post-MBA experience) — this is designed as a first role for a young, ambitious and dynamic professional


• Prior internship or pre-MBA experience in consulting, operations, finance or another analytical, cross-functional role is a plus


• No prior production, manufacturing or transformation experience required, but genuine curiosity about the business is essential

Skills

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; comfortable working with data and building structured, well-organised analyses


• Excellent written and verbal communication skills


• Technology-savvy and genuinely energised by new tools — comfortable using AI and automation to work faster and more effectively


• Exceptionally strong organisational skills and attention to detail, able to keep a large, moving pipeline of initiatives clean and current


• Collaborative, proactive mindset with the confidence to build rapport across all levels, from the CEO and Senior Directors to plant-floor and farm teams


• Willingness to travel to production sites as needed

Education

• MBA required (recently completed or completing), from an accredited programme


• Undergraduate degree in Business, Engineering, Economics or a related field

Measures of Success

• Maintains a clean, current and trusted improvement pipeline that the CEO and Senior Directors rely on


• Builds strong, constructive working relationships across the CEO’s office, the Senior Directors and site-level teams


• Increases the number of ideas coming forward from the business and the share of those that reach delivery


• Demonstrates growing operational fluency and increasing ownership of assigned improvement workstreams


• Positions themselves for advancement into a senior Chief of Staff, operations leadership or general management track within 18–24 months, having built deep organisational knowledge along the way