Group Capex Programme Lead

We have a new opportunity for a Group Capex Programme Lead to join our Group Engineering & Excellence team within Finsbury Food Group. Finsbury Food Group is one of the UK’s leading speciality bakery manufacturers. We continually raise quality, innovation, and operational standards while building long-term, trusted relationships across retail, foodservice, and brand partnerships. Our portfolio spans a wide range of bakery categories—from market-leading retailer own-brand products to beloved licensed and branded ranges—produced across our nationwide network of bakeries. This is an exciting opportunity to take ownership of Finsbury’s Group Capital Expenditure programme, leading the governance, prioritisation, and successful delivery of strategic capital investment across our manufacturing sites. You’ll play a key role in shaping the future of our operations by ensuring investment supports business growth, automation, sustainability, operational excellence, and long-term resilience. Working closely with senior leaders across Engineering, Operations, Finance, Procurement, Supply Chain and Manufacturing, you’ll provide strategic oversight of our capital portfolio, ensuring projects are delivered safely, on time, within budget, and with measurable business benefits. You’ll establish clear governance, develop long-term capital strategies, embed consistent project management standards, and build capability across the business to improve project delivery. This role would suit an experienced programme or project leader who enjoys bringing structure to complex programmes, influencing senior stakeholders, and driving continuous improvement across a multi-site manufacturing environment.

Responsibilities

Lead the governance and control of Finsbury’s capital investment portfolio, ensuring every project is prioritised, managed effectively, and aligned with strategic business objectives; Oversee programme performance by monitoring spend, delivery milestones, risks, and benefit realisation, providing clear visibility to senior leadership and ensuring issues are addressed proactively; Develop and maintain the Group’s long-term capital investment strategy, helping to shape future investment across automation, asset replacement, infrastructure, sustainability, energy efficiency, and manufacturing capability; Ensure investment decisions support operational performance, future growth, compliance, and cost reduction; Standardise the way capital projects are managed across the Group; Implement robust governance processes, develop practical project management tools and stage-gate controls, and ensure projects are delivered with strong safety, food safety, legal, contractor management, and compliance standards throughout the entire project lifecycle; Partner with Finance, Procurement, Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, Technical and site leadership teams to ensure projects remain commercially robust and strategically aligned; Provide early engineering input into New Product Innovation projects, helping teams understand infrastructure, capacity, equipment, and investment requirements before projects progress; Coach and develop project managers and engineering teams, creating greater consistency, accountability, and project delivery capability across the business

Requirements

Degree qualified (or equivalent experience) in Engineering, Manufacturing, Project Management or a related discipline; Significant experience leading capital projects or capital programmes within manufacturing, FMCG, food production, or a similarly complex operational environment; Strong experience managing multi-site capital investment programmes and governance frameworks; Excellent understanding of project management, programme governance, risk management, cost control, scheduling and benefit realisation; Commercially aware with experience developing business cases and evaluating investment opportunities; Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence and challenge constructively at all levels; Experience working collaboratively across Engineering, Operations, Finance, Procurement and Supply Chain functions; Confident analysing complex project data and translating it into meaningful business insight; Highly organised with the ability to manage multiple priorities across a diverse capital portfolio; Passionate about continuous improvement, coaching others, and embedding consistent ways of working; Willingness to travel regularly across Finsbury manufacturing sites

Nice to have

Formal Project Management qualification would be advantageous

Benefits

Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Leave; Enhanced Pension Scheme; Death in Service Benefit; Free Employee Assistance Programme (open to colleagues and their families); Retail discounts accessible via Benefits Hub platform; Refer a Friend Scheme (up to £300 per referral – T&C’s dependent); Employee Recognition Awards; Extensive Learning & Development opportunities (including opportunities for sponsored professional memberships and in-house development course); Opportunity to be part of a fantastic, growing organisation