Breeder Farm Manager at Olam Nigeria Limited

Functional Area: Poultry
Department/Product: Grains / Animal Feeds & Proteins (AFP)

Summary

• Grains is one of the 6 prioritized platforms in Olam The Grains business consists of 4 verticals: Wheat Milling (in sub-Saharan Africa), Origination & Trading (Origination in Black Sea and Latin America, Destination in Middle East & North Africa, Prop trading in Wheat/Corn/Soy), Animal Feeds & Proteins (starting in Nigeria, but plan to expand to 4-5 countries in Africa, Asia & MENA by 2020) and Ocean Freight (vessel charter, Prop trading).
• The AFP business is has two large feed mills (annual capacity – 660 TMT p.a.) producing poultry and fish feed in Nigeria. Besides this, we also run West Africa’s largest commercial breeding & hatchery facility producing layer & broiler day-old-chicks (DOC). The steady state (2020) business turnover will be ~ $350m with a PBT potential of $30-40m, making it amongst the largest businesses for Olam Nigeria.

Job Description

• As the leading farm to shelf organization Olam values its plantations as the starting point and source of all prosperity.
• The Estate Manager is a leader dedicated to the development and betterment of the plantation estate. The role is multidimensional starting from managing people to land development and working with vendors.
• The incumbent would be responsible for managing the palm and rubber plantation from all phases of estate works including land development, replanting, maintenance of optimum crop production, cost management and overall estate operations.

Key Deliverables
Strategic Effectiveness:

• New land development for rubber estates, nursery establishments, land clearing, planting, maintenance and upkeep.
• Responsible for the overall estate operations and budget/cost estimation within cost maturity target
• Planning and management of fertilizers stores, chemicals, and machinery

Operational Effectiveness:

• Build the required talent for the estate. Guide the team on the entire plantation procedures 
• Implementation of all the requirement for planting TLC and LC
• Land identification, purchasing, and evaluation for high yield plantations
• Conduct periodical reviews of the plantation operations at different locations.

Organizational Effectiveness:

• Great networking with government agencies and environmental departments for regulatory approvals.  
• Understand environmental and social impact assessment, conduct assessments periodically.  
• Obtain primary yield production and identify cases where there is variance with last year yield. Plan remedial action in case of negative variance.

Tasks / KRAs
Key Responsibilities Include:

• This will be a senior-level global hire.
• The person should have 15-20 years of experience working across poultry industries. He should have experience in the developed world (with high level of automation in closed houses) and developing world (Africa preferred) for him to achieve developed world standards in Nigeria.
• Must have experience in Layer & Broiler Breeder farms, fully exposed to ultra-modern and automated (closed houses, tunnel ventilation, automatic feeding & automatic egg collection systems etc with low human intervention)
• To plan and implement the operation of the Layer & Broiler Parent Stock farms and on completion assume responsibility for running them.
• To coordinate all farms activities including but not limited to budgeting, stocking plans, feeding, lighting  and vaccination schedules
• To manage the farms as per best in class international industry norms.
• To recruit, develop and train his team members and define & implement good practices with respect to brooding & growing, vaccination, health, bio-security measures and performance of the flocks of the respective broiler/ layer PS.
• To develop protocols for body weight and flock uniformity, vaccination, health, bio-security, labour sanitation practices, feeding, preventive medication and develop formats for measuring the performance parameters. 
• Improve project infrastructure to enable efficient utilization of facilities/resources and achieve good performance with low operating costs.
• To put in place a very high level of international bio-security standards.
• To develop reporting formats and review for team members on regular basis.
• To deliver on goals on mortalities, flock uniformity, egg production, HHHE and lower the cost of production of Hatching egg.
• The farm manager’s role is a very hands-on and not a supervisory one. The farm manager will be expected to stay on site (housing being developed) on a 24x7 basis,
• The Manager will be staying in Kaduna on a bachelor status.
•  In case of exceptional candidates the family status can be provided and the family will be based in accommodation provided in site. However, in such cases, at any point of time during the weekend, occasional visits will arrange at the Company guest house in Abuja .

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Veterinary Sciences  with specialization in Poultry Production/Pathology etc.

Requirements:

• Minimum of 10-15 years of working experience, preferably in plantation and estate management roles with a large organization.
• Language – English & French is a must for this role
• Diploma, advanced/higher/graduate diploma, bachelor’s degree, postgraduate diploma or professional degree in agricultural, plantation management, aquaculture/forestry or equivalent
• Possess excellent people skills, leadership qualities and ability to work independently. Motivating staff for process orientation and being a go-to problem solver.
• Experiences in land clearing, P&D, replanting, new planting, and development of areas.
• Conversant with the use of a personal computer is highly desirable.