At Thai Union Group, we are shaping the future of seafood through bold ideas, consumer-centric thinking, and breakthrough innovation. Our Innovation Hub in Wageningen brings together insights, technology, and creativity to unlock future growth opportunities across our global Ambient Branded Business Unit.
We are looking for a Concept Development Director to lead the front end of innovation globally, transforming consumer needs, market trends, emerging technologies, and strategic opportunities into compelling innovation concepts that will define the future of ambient branded seafood.
The role will report jointly to the Managing Director, R&D, Branded Ambient Business Unit, and the Managing Director, Global Marketing and Commercial Excellence, Branded Ambient Business Unit.
Your Responsibilities:
- Shape the global innovation agenda by identifying future growth opportunities, innovation platforms, and white-space territories across key markets
- Translate consumer insights, market trends, customer needs, and technology developments into breakthrough innovation concepts
- Develop compelling consumer propositions, including target audience, usage occasion, product concept, value proposition, and positioning
- Build and manage a robust pipeline of validated innovation concepts that support long-term business growth
- Prioritize opportunities based on strategic fit, consumer relevance, commercial potential, feasibility, and scalability
- Work closely with Consumer Insights, Marketing, R&D, Commercial, Packaging, and local market teams to create alignment around innovation priorities
- Support opportunity sizing, business case development, and investment decisions in partnership with cross-functional stakeholders
- Champion a consumer-led innovation culture that balances creativity, experimentation, and commercial discipline
- Guide concepts through the early innovation funnel and prepare them for successful handover into development and launch readiness
Why Choose Us?
- Our Values: At Thai Union, we uphold a culture defined by passion, humility, and respect. Our team is driven by a responsible, collaborative, and innovative approach, ensuring that our work contributes to meaningful change in the seafood industry.
- Shape the Future of Innovation: This is a unique opportunity to define the next generation of seafood innovation. You will play a pivotal role in identifying future growth platforms and influencing strategic direction across a global business.
- Global Influence: Work with senior stakeholders across international markets and functions to drive innovation at scale and help shape the future portfolio of some of the world's most recognized seafood brands.
- Consumer-Led Innovation: Bring together consumer insights, technology, and creativity to create meaningful solutions that address evolving consumer needs and market opportunities.
About You:
- Seasoned experience in FMCG, food, consumer goods, innovation, concept development, marketing innovation, or innovation strategy.
- Proven track record of building innovation pipelines and translating insights into commercially relevant concepts.
- Strong experience in consumer insight generation, trend analysis, proposition development, and innovation strategy.
- Ability to transform complex information into simple, compelling, consumer-focused concepts.
- Strong commercial acumen with a clear understanding of how innovation creates business value.
- Experience influencing senior stakeholders and leading cross-functional initiatives without direct authority.
- Comfortable working in ambiguity and driving progress in early-stage innovation environments.
- Strong communication, facilitation, storytelling, and presentation skills.
- Experience within food, seafood, protein, or adjacent FMCG categories is preferred.
- Familiarity with GenAI and AI-enabled innovation tools is considered an advantage.
- Master's degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Innovation, Food Business, or a related field preferred.
- Willingness to travel internationally as required.
About Us:
Thai Union Group, a global seafood leader, the largest canned seafood producer in the world plays a dominant role both as own global brand portfolio as well as through its Private Label (OEM) producer that includes Chicken of the Sea, John West, Petit Navire, Parmentier, Mareblu, King Oscar, Rugen Rish, SELECT, Fisho and Qfresh etc. Thai Union Group is committed to realizing its “Healthy Living, Healthy Oceans” vision. With a focus on health and wellbeing across us, we take our responsibility to sustainable fishing and the marine environment seriously – in 2016 Thai Union launched SeaChange – our strategy for looking after the oceans and managing our waste, our responsibility to our people working around the globe and the communities we work with. We set ourselves and our peers some challenging targets to be more sustainable and we’re making great progress.
Our values drive how we approach our work and engage with our people and customers. These values are to be passionate, humble, respectful, responsible, collaborative and innovative. We do great work, the right way, in challenging times, but we have a strong team that gets the job done. Our people are full of positivity, resilience, fortitude and humour.
We are committed to creating an inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and recognized for who they are. This is a critical component of our success. Each of our employees adds value to the company regardless of gender, education, religion, origin, nationality, disability or age.
What we can offer you
- Competitive salary and benefits package
- Discretionary bonus
- Pension plan
- 27 days of annual leave
- Sport membership contribution
- International career development opportunities
- Exposure to global brands, markets, and senior leadership
- A collaborative and innovation-driven working environment
- The opportunity to shape the future of a global category
Next Steps
If you are passionate about making a difference and thrive in a flexible, collaborative setting, we would love to hear from you!
We will review your application and if we think you meet the criteria of the role, we will reach out.
You will have a call with one of our recruitment team and then if we move to the next stage, we will set up an interview with your potential new manager either face to face or via Teams. Final stage interviews are usually face to face.
Thai Union is committed to providing equality of opportunity. If you require any reasonable adjustments to support your application, please let us know.
