Rising stars in our midst

The management team at Consumer Products UK (CPUK) would like to recognise the progress of two of the team at Rosyth, Charli Skinner (above right) and Erin Davies (above left). Both have been identified as rising stars of the business.

Charli Skinner

Charli joined Mowi in 2018 through the ‘Handpicked 100’ scheme which focused on helping young people get into work. She joined the engineering department on a temporary contract as an admin assistant and impressed the management team so much that her position was made permanent after only six months.

Initially, Charli’s role centred around carrying out data collection on engineering downtime and reporting KPIs for the department. This data helped to analyse equipment breakdowns and implement corrective actions, resulting in large reductions in annual downtime on high-tech production equipment.

As the business ran a project to introduce a computerised maintenance management system (CMMS), Charli began to really take ownership of this and is currently the resident expert.

Charli uses this system to plan and assign important maintenance activities to the 42 engineering personnel within the team. She has also shown a passion to share knowledge and has chaired training sessions with other sites and provided tuition to engineering managers on the system.

This year, Charli was promoted to engineering support lead. In this role she oversees the engineering stores team, which consists of two stores co-ordinators and one business admin apprentice. As well as providing direct line management to her team, collectively they are responsible for running a busy store area which has over £1.5m of stock holdings. Her responsibility also includes weekly budget reporting to senior management for the site.

The team describes Charli as a delight to work with, always with a cheery face and a straight-to-the-point attitude without being negative. She will always take the time to assist anyone who asks for advice.

Erin Davies

Erin Davies joined Mowi in 2020 as one of the first apprentices in a new scheme. Erin was originally recruited within the supply chain function as an apprentice planner of one of the production areas.

To say Erin was thrown in at the deep end is an understatement. Just as she began her role within the planning team, the Covid pandemic hit, and lockdown led to increased customer demand from supermarkets.

Circumstances dictated that Erin’s training programme had to be fast-tracked. This is an industry where the concept of short shelf life and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) planning is always a challenge, but during the pandemic the situation was significantly more challenging as consumer behaviours were so unpredictable.

Erin seemed to be a natural in the role and the fact she was only 19 years old at the time did not deter her from rising to the challenge with confidence. Within three months, she was delivering the role of an experienced planner from downloading orders, managing stocks, as well as planning six high speed packing lines containing multi-customer specifications and allergens. All this whilst dealing with unknown challenges such as significant labour shortages, raw material disruption and erratic customer order fluctuations.

The flexibility that Erin demonstrated as well as her ability to take everything in her stride was evident for all to see.

Erin’s next challenge was Christmas, which brings seasonal demands to production and new product launches. There was still uncertainty surrounding the first Christmas during the pandemic.

Again, Erin rose to the challenge to ensure that production was maximised despite staff shortages. She went on to learn more about the planning department and showed a willingness to improve her knowledge of planning as well as the future strategy of the business.

Erin continues to excel within the planning team and has gained more experience in planning our Primary, Added Value, High Care, High Risk and Deli departments. She has bonded well and has grown strong working relationships with our New Product Development, Technical, Procurement, Logistics, Hygiene, Engineering, Commercial, HR and Finance teams and is held in high regard within our business.

The Mowi business is growing and continues to build in complexity, which requires the ability of a strong planner with credentials to work at pace and be flexible to meet customers’ demands.

The team describes Erin as a dedicated, adaptable individual who can analyse facts and make very good judgement calls with the information at hand. She takes everything in her stride in a business that is forever evolving.

Erin has managed to combine a demanding job with studying and has completed her SVQ, Business and Administration Level 3.

Well done Charli and Erin!