Mainland Dairy

About Lactalis-Mainland Dairy

Mainland Dairy, the business formerly known as Fonterra’s global Consumer and associated businesses, is now part of the Lactalis Group and known as Lactalis-Mainland Dairy.

Lactalis is a French family-owned business founded in Laval in 1933. Today, it is the world’s leading dairy group, present in 50 countries employing around 85,500 people. It is home to some of the world’s best known global and international dairy brands, including Président, Galbani and Parmalat, and local brands including Pauls, OAK, and Cracker Barrel in Australia.

Lactalis-Mainland Dairy is a team of more than 4,300 employees, operating 16 manufacturing sites across Oceania, Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. We make well-loved brands including Perfect Italiano, Mainland, and Western Star.

Our passionate and talented team is committed to nurturing the future, unlocking new opportunities, and fostering innovation in nutrition and food.

The Opportunity

As the Maintenance Lead, you’ll be responsible for the execution of scheduled/planned work, organising break-in work, and delegating tasks across the Maintenance department.

You’ll work closely with the Maintenance Planner and Maintenance Supervisor, helping drive reliability and effective day-to-day leadership.

You’ll play a key role in:

• Leading daily maintenance execution by allocating tasks to fitters, electricians and contractors, monitoring progress, and being the first point of contact for technical troubleshooting.
• Planning and coordinating PMs and shutdown work, ensuring the scoping of work orders completion, ensuring spares/tools readiness, and partnering with production to minimise downtime.
• Maintaining a strong focus on Health, Safety and Compliance, including safety protocol, communication of OPLs and HSW/ENV moments, and supporting incident reporting and action closure in systems.
• Driving continuous improvement and reliability, actively identifying cost reduction and reliability improvement opportunities across maintenance and services operations.
• Key leader and owner of required IWS systems.
• Supporting capability uplift through mentoring apprentices, sharing best practice, and following up where work outcomes are not to standard.

About You

You are a capable and decisive maintenance leader who leads by example, creates a strong safety culture, and drives performance through people, process, and continuous improvement.

• Qualified in electrical or mechanical trade, with an engineering background desirable, bringing strong technical credibility to lead teams effectively
• Demonstrated experience in a manufacturing environment, ideally within food or dairy, with the ability to balance operational priorities and production demands
• Confident in applying continuous improvement methodologies, using maintenance management systems (e.g. MEX) to improve asset reliability and team performance
• Strong leader in health, safety, quality, food safety, and environmental compliance, with a proven ability to set standards and hold teams accountable
• An effective communicator who can clearly set direction, coach team members, and influence key stakeholders
• Calm and solutions-focused under pressure, with the ability to prioritise work, manage risk, and make sound decisions in a fast-paced environment
• Proven ability to develop capability, drive engagement, and build a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement

What We Offer

• Competitive pay and benefits
• Career development and internal opportunities across a global business
• A team focused workplace in a fantastic culture where your work has real impact
• A strong commitment to quality, innovation and sustainability
• Flexible work arrangements where possible

We believe in you bringing your best and most authentic self to work and we want you to succeed in a way that allows you to win, in every aspect of your life. We strongly encourage applications from First Nations people, as well as individuals of diverse cultural and social backgrounds. Our team is dedicated to supporting your professional development and personal wellbeing.

We look forward to the possibility of you joining our inclusive team.

Please note that applicants must have full working rights for Australia to be considered.

We are politely declining recruitment agency support and approaches for this role.