NOT FOR NOW. NOT FOR NEXT MONTH. BUT POSSIBLY BEFORE THE END OF 2026 OR EARLY 2027…
Redfox has been asked by one of the UK’s most ambitious and rapidly expanding fresh produce businesses to start identifying the very best Farms Director-level individuals in the market.
This isn’t an immediate vacancy. There isn’t a start date next month. But with significant further growth and potential acquisitions being planned, our client wants to be ahead of the curve and understand who could potentially join the business when the time is right. And they don’t simply want a Farms Director.
They want someone who can look across a substantial and increasingly diverse UK farming operation and ask:
How can we make this better? Where can we create significant efficiencies? How can we bring multiple farming operations together strategically? Where can technology, data, machinery, people and better systems improve performance? And how do we build a farming operation capable of supporting the next stage of significant business growth?
THE OPPORTUNITY
Our client is an established, highly successful and increasingly significant force within UK fresh produce. The business has grown considerably through a combination of organic development, investment and acquisition, creating an increasingly substantial UK farming footprint. And there is an appetite to grow further.
As that footprint develops, there is a clear opportunity to create greater strategic alignment across the farming businesses – identifying efficiencies, sharing best practice, improving performance and ensuring the farming operations are structured appropriately for future scale.
That is where the potential Farms Director comes in.
WHAT COULD YOU BE DOING?
The precise remit will evolve alongside the business, but we anticipate it incorporating areas such as:
- Strategic leadership across multiple farming operations
- Identifying and delivering significant operational efficiencies
- Reviewing farming structures, systems and processes
- Benchmarking performance across different farming businesses
- Driving improvements in productivity, yield, quality and cost
- Reviewing machinery strategies and capital investment
- Developing greater use of technology, automation and data
- Creating synergies between existing and newly acquired businesses
- Supporting the integration of future acquisitions
- Developing and mentoring senior farming and growing teams
- Working closely with Managing Directors and senior operational leaders
- Helping shape longer-term farming strategy
- Ensuring individual farming businesses retain their strengths whilst benefiting from the scale and capability of the wider organisation
This will be about strategy AND farming reality.
We need someone equally comfortable around a Board table discussing investment and long-term strategy as they are standing in a field challenging how something could be done better.
WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
Quite simply…the best of the best. You may already be a: Farms Director | Farming Director | Agricultural Director | Head of Farming | Director of Growing | Operations Director | Senior Farm Director
Or you may currently lead a substantial farming operation and be ready for something considerably bigger. You are likely to have operated across large-scale commercial farming, fresh produce or another intensive agricultural environment where efficiency, people, quality, productivity and commercial performance all matter. Most importantly, you will be able to demonstrate that you have changed things.
Not simply managed what was already there.
We want to hear about the efficiencies you have created, businesses you have improved, teams you have developed, technology you have introduced, costs you have taken out, performance you have driven and strategic changes you have successfully implemented.
UK-WIDE
The group’s farming interests are spread across the UK, so this will not be a role confined to one farm or one location. The successful individual will need to be comfortable operating across multiple businesses and locations and working with established senior teams.
AND THE TIMING?
That’s the interesting bit. This isn’t for now. It isn’t necessarily for next month. But it could be before the end of 2026 or during the early part of 2027, depending upon planned growth, acquisitions and the continued development of the wider business.
Our client has therefore asked Redfox to start looking now. No pressure. No immediate recruitment process. Just confidential conversations with exceptional Farms Director-level individuals who might be intrigued by the scale of what could be created.
So if you are very good at what you do, have operated at a genuinely senior level within commercial farming and believe you could help create significant efficiencies and strategic value across an ever-growing UK fresh produce farming business…Max would very much like to hear from you.
All approaches and conversations will of course be treated in the strictest confidence.
Apply via this website or call Max MacGillivray on 01284 715055 quoting Ref: 6121M
