How did you get to where you are today?

I've worked in the food manufacturing industry for more than 15 years but this is only my second month in my role as operations manager for Eat Natural. My main responsibility is to maintain Eat Natural's kitchen-style approach to making its snack bars while incorporating growth. I am also responsible for ensuring every aspect of our method of making the bars runs like clockwork, from manufacturing to ordering and sending out the bars. Before Eat Natural I had an interim post as logistics manager for Hotel Chocolat. Before that I held senior production manager and logistics manager roles at Geest and production manager and commercial manager roles at Northern Foods.

Tell us a bit about Eat Natural.

Eat Natural makes snack bars in-the-kitchen-style using the best ingredients available. It was formed in 1997 by Bill Porter, Preet Grewal and Praveen Vijh who saw a gap in the market for natural-tasting snack bars, and since that time has gone from a small kitchen to a 30,000 sq ft 'makery'. There are currently nine different fruit and nut bars available. We also supply to 15 countries and have a big market in France, Germany and the US. The company has the firm belief that happy bars make happy people. There is good staff morale and the company is very keen to keep this happy culture and philosophy going. We even have our very own Aunt Mary who runs our canteen and makes us daily treats.

What are you currently working on?

I'm labouring away on a new project - a fruit and nut 'spa'. It's a new production operation where we buy in fruit and nuts, clean them and then process them. We call it the spa because it's a pampering day for fruit and nuts. They come out of the process pampered and clean. By doing this we can take control of the quality control for our raw materials.

What is your working week like?

My week is usually fairly general but it is usually very busy and a bit hectic! I travel 60 miles to work every day but it's definitely worthwhile. I always have a morning meeting with my operations team and there are lots of team meetings. I really want to maintain Eat Natural's philosophy and keep the happy culture going in the company so as a consequence there is also lots of training and team building.