Head of Quality Culture & Standards

About the role

Reporting to the GM of Quality, this is a senior leadership role responsible for driving quality culture, systems, standards, and continuous improvement initiatives across the Yili Oceania Group.

You will play a pivotal role in shaping and embedding a consistent, high-performing quality and food safety culture across multiple sites. This includes establishing unified frameworks, standardising systems and governance, and ensuring alignment with both local regulatory requirements and global HQ expectations.

Leading a team of experienced coordinators, you will partner closely with site leadership, operational teams, and key stakeholders to deliver quality outcomes, strengthen capability, and improve performance through insight-led decision making.

A key focus will be driving consistency across sites, conducting gap analyses, aligning standards, and ensuring all subsidiaries operate in line with group expectations and best practice.

This role can be based at Hokitika, Rolleston, or Glenavy, with travel across sites as required.

About You

You are an experienced quality leader within food or dairy manufacturing, with a strong track record of driving quality performance, systems improvement, and cultural change in complex, multi-site environments.

You'll bring:

• 5–7 years’ experience in quality, operations, or leadership roles, ideally within dairy or food manufacturing
• Strong knowledge of quality systems, HACCP, auditing, and regulatory standards
• Proven experience leading change initiatives and embedding quality culture at scale
• Strong problem-solving capability, including root cause analysis and CAPA processes
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and influencing skills across all levels of the business

You are commercially aware, highly collaborative, and able to balance strategic thinking with hands-on delivery. You thrive in a dynamic environment, can prioritise effectively, and are confident navigating complexity to deliver meaningful outcomes.

A bit about the organisation

Westland Milk Products is a well-known New Zealand end-to-end dairy manufacturer based in the beautiful South Island with offices and production facilities based in both Christchurch and Hokitika.

Owned by the Global Top 5 dairy company Yili Group, Westland Milk Products and its related companies in New Zealand, Oceania Dairy (Glenavy), Pure Nutrition (Rolleston), Canary Foods (Hamilton) and EasiYo (Auckland) form a group that we refer to as the Yili Oceania group. The combined business produces over 170,000mt of finished goods which are then exported to over 40 countries, driving annual revenue well in excess of $1.3B – and growing.

Where to from here?

We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every single requirement listed above - no one ever meets 100%. If this role excites you, we want to hear from you.

Please submit your application through our careers page at westlandcareers.co.nz.

Applications close Sunday 12th July, but may be reviewed earlier and the advert may close before the listed date if a suitable candidate is identified.

Applicants must have valid New Zealand work rights.

Job Details

Reference #

34780

Posted on

23 Jun 2026

Closes on

12 Jul 2026 21:00

Location(s)

Christchurch - Hornby, Hokitika, Rolleston

Expertise

Quality & Compliance

Job level(s)

Executive

Work type(s)

Permanent