Innovation & Renovation Project Manager 15 Month Contract – Domestic Canada, Markham, Ontario
In 1889 the Clover Leaf brand was first introduced to Canadians when the company began operating the first commercial salmon cannery on the Fraser River near Vancouver, British Columbia.
Over the last 135 years, Clover Leaf has grown to offer a variety of seafood products including canned tuna, salmon, sardines, oysters, mussels, clams, and shrimp. Clover Leaf is consistently voted by Canadians as the #1 most trusted brand for canned seafood. Today, canned seafood is bought by 70% of Canadians. Clover Leaf is the #1 brand in the category, with over 40% share of the market and 90% brand awareness. Clover Leaf Seafoods offers seafood under the Clover Leaf and Brunswick brands. Brunswick is the #1 brand of canned sardines in Canada. Our International division, Bumble Bee Seafoods International, exports to over forty countries around the world, and Brunswick is the #1 brand of Sardines in the Caribbean region.
Clover Leaf Seafoods, along with our U.S. affiliate, Bumble Bee Foods, form one of North America’s largest branded seafood companies. In 2020, Clover Leaf Seafoods, along with Bumble Bee Foods, was acquired by our long-time partner, FCF Company Ltd. FCF is a privately held company and one of the world’s largest marine trading companies, with 50 years of experience in the supply of tuna and other seafood. With FCF as a strong strategic owner, Clover Leaf Seafoods is well-positioned for future growth.
Our Beliefs: Delicious, protein-rich, versatile, convenient, and affordable. We believe seafood is one of the greatest foods on the planet.
Our Purpose: Feeding people’s lives through the power of the ocean.
Our How: Trusted brands offering seafood products that are delicious, nutritious, and accessible.
As a company of seafood lovers, we have made it our mission to discover new, innovative, and more sustainable ways to source food from the ocean for our family of brands and help others discover seafood goodness. We offer the largest range of certified sustainable seafood in the canned seafood category.
Innovation & Renovation Project Manager 15 Month Contract – Domestic Canada, Markham, Ontario
Reporting to the Director of Marketing, the Innovation & Renovation Project Manager leads end-to-end innovation, renovation, and commercialization projects. You will be responsible for exciting innovation and product optimization projects from concept through launch, driving cross-functional alignment and executional excellence.
Position Overview:
- Innovation & Renovation: Champion product innovation, renovation, and reformulation projects from brief through launch. Collaboratively lead cross-functional teams across Technical Services, Factory Operations, Sales, Finance, Procurement and external partners.
- Critical & Complex Packaging Conversion: Lead a critical and complex packaging conversion project. You will be responsible for ensuring superior packaging design, seamless handover of packaging materials to the factory and flawless execution with retailers in the market.
- Execute with Excellence: Own detailed project timelines, action logs and status updates to senior management. Proactively identify risks, roadblocks, and timeline pressures, and develop mitigation plans or escalate issues as needed to protect launch timing and quality.
- Business Analysis & Insights: Leverage NielsenIQ and other available data to analyze category & brand performance, supporting business reporting and data-driven recommendations.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Lead end-to-end commercialization planning for key innovation, renovation, and complex packaging conversion projects.
- Responsible for on-time, on-budget, and high-quality execution by driving project plans, deliverables, decisions, and cross-functional accountability.
- Support innovation product P&L development by obtaining cost inputs from Procurement, Operations, Finance, and other cross-functional partners.
- Create innovation business case presentations, project critical path documents, launch trackers, internal sales presentations, and retailer-facing presentations.
- Use NielsenIQ and other data sources to provide category and brand insights and KPI reporting to senior management
- Manage marketing budget tracking files and provide monthly updates to Finance team
- Manage creative and execution of in-store marketing and promotional activity, including sell sheets, displays and related materials.
- Identify opportunities to improve commercialization tools, templates, processes, and ways of working to increase speed and launch discipline.
What You Bring to the Team:
- University degree in Business/Commerce or Economics.
- Culinary mindset, with a passion for food and cooking and an appreciation for seafood.
- 5+ years of marketing experience in consumer packaged goods; food or beverage experience strongly preferred.
- Experience working in the Canadian CPG/grocery retail environment with an understanding of execution requirements for key national and regional retailers.
- Experience managing complex innovation projects with tight timelines and multiple stakeholders. You should have strong project management discipline, critical path development experience and an ability to execute structured product launch processes.
- Strong communicator and collaborative team player with the ability to influence without authority and deliver results across functions in a fast-paced environment.
- Self-starter who manages ambiguity, solves problems quickly, shows initiative, and keeps projects moving with strong attention to detail.
- Strong analytical skills, with the ability to work with data to provide actionable insights. Prior experience analyzing, interpreting and presenting Nielsen data insights is a must.
- Proficient in MS Word, PowerPoint, advanced Excel, and NielsenIQ.
- PMP certification, Lean experience, or formal project management training would be considered an asset.
- Fluent in English; bilingual in English and French is an asset.
Why Work for Clover Leaf Seafoods?
- We are a medium-sized company with a collaborative and inclusive culture.
- We work efficiently as a team and provide an environment where you can make an impact on the business.
- As part of our “focus forward” value to build the future for our company, we are committed to continuously evolving and learning together as a team.
- We are proudly a “people-focused” company, knowing that the best and only true way to achieve our company mission is through our people.
- This role offers the opportunity to make a visible impact by leading high-priority innovation, renovation, and packaging conversion projects that shape the future of Clover Leaf and Brunswick brands in Canada.
What We Offer:
- Engaging and agile workplace culture, collaborative and inclusive teams.
- Investing in our people through numerous learning and development programs such as GROW.
- Commitment to resource sustainability.
- Recognition and rewards through our programs.
Clover Leaf Seafoods fosters diversity, inclusion and belonging within and across our organization. We welcome all to apply, including women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and persons of any sexual orientation or gender identity. Interested applicants can apply directly.
Clover Leaf Seafoods is an accessible employer. If you require accommodation throughout the recruitment process (including alternate formats of materials or accessible meeting rooms), please let us know and we will collaborate with you to meet your needs.
