Raw Material Quality Specialist

About the role

Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) presents an exciting opportunity for a Raw Material Quality Specialist to join the Midrand team. The role reports to the Country Lead QFSE and is responsible for safeguarding product quality and supply continuity by managing raw material quality systems.

Key responsibilities

• Own and continuously improve the raw materials quality management system for packaging materials and ingredients, including standards, escalation protocols, tracking tools and governance routines.
• Manage the Supplier Partnering Process (SPP), ensuring incidents are logged, supported by evidence, escalated and closed within agreed timelines.
• Strengthen incoming inspection criteria, defect guides, training material and plant controls using lessons from incidents and recurring defects.
• Ensure plants record raw material issues accurately, review quality alerts, coordinate rapid escalation, and lead root‑cause analysis and corrective‑action reviews for high‑impact defects.
• Notify suppliers of non‑conformances, coordinate investigations, drive sustainable corrective actions, and plan risk‑based supplier audits and performance reviews.
• Validate supplier claims, coordinate credit or replacement stock, and maintain visibility of raw‑material related downtime, waste, rework and financial losses.
• Maintain quality alert, defect and supplier issue trackers, analyse performance, provide operational updates and management reports, and act as the central liaison across plants, Procurement and suppliers.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree or National Diploma in Food Science, Chemistry, Microbiology, Packaging Technology, Quality Management, Engineering, Supply Chain or a related field.
• Minimum 5 years' relevant experience in quality assurance, supplier quality, packaging or ingredient quality within an FMCG, food or beverage environment.
• Practical experience with packaging materials and/or ingredients used in manufacturing operations.
• Demonstrated experience in supplier quality management, audits, performance reviews, non‑conformance investigation and corrective‑action management.
• Experience applying GMP, HACCP, FSSC/ISO and related quality‑system requirements.
• Experience analysing quality data and preparing dashboards, trackers and management reports.

Required skills

• Technical knowledge of raw material, packaging and ingredient quality risks.
• Structured problem‑solving, root cause analysis and continuous improvement.
• Data analysis, trend interpretation and insight generation.
• Supplier and stakeholder management, influencing and negotiation.
• Quality auditing and corrective‑action verification.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.