* Work Close To Home / Work Life Balance!
* Busy FMCG - Stable and Growing
At Real Pet Food Co., we produce high-quality nutrition for pets across Australia and international markets. Our Ingleburn site is a fast-paced wet manufacturing environment, where reliability, safety, and strong maintenance practices are critical to keeping production moving.
This is not a traditional Monday to Friday Maintenance Planning role.
This is a business-critical position at our Yatala manufacturing site — the largest raw pet food manufacturing facility in Asia and the operational heartbeat of Real Pet Food Company.
Yatala is a wet manufacturing environment, operating at pace with short shelf-life products, complex processing requirements, and a production team that relies heavily on maintenance excellence to keep the site running safely and efficiently. Success in this role comes from being hands-on, collaborative, and embedded with operations — not planning from behind a desk.
If you are motivated by seeing your work directly impact production outcomes and enjoy solving real operational challenges alongside engineers, trades and production teams, this role offers genuine purpose and reward.
The Role
As Maintenance Planner, you will lead the planning and scheduling of all site maintenance activities across 11 production lines, consisting of a mix of legacy equipment and brand-new fully automated machinery.
You will play a central role in ensuring maintenance activities are executed safely, efficiently, and with minimal production disruption — balancing reactive needs with long-term asset reliability.
Key responsibilities include:
* Planning and scheduling corrective, preventative, predictive and proactive maintenance activities
* Ownership and ongoing optimisation of the site CMMS (MEX), including asset master data, PM programs, spare parts and labour records
* Coordinating closely with production and logistics teams to plan maintenance windows and shutdown activities
* Scoping, budgeting and project managing major shutdowns and rebuild programs
* Managing LOTO requirements, BOM staging and shutdown execution readiness
* Supporting capital projects and integrating maintenance requirements into new equipment and upgrades
* Ensuring all statutory, regulatory, OHS and food safety requirements are embedded in planned works
* Reporting maintenance KPIs and driving continuous improvement initiatives
* Working with Reliability Specialists and Maintenance Leadership to develop long-term asset life plans
* Continuously improving PM task quality, durations, and maintenance strategies
This role requires someone willing to step in and support the team when needed — because maintaining production continuity sometimes means adapting outside standard hours.
About You
You are mechanically minded, practical and intuitive — someone who understands how production plants actually run and plans accordingly.
You bring:
* Minimum 5 years’ experience within a manufacturing environment
* Proven maintenance planning and scheduling experience
* Strong background supporting high-speed processing and/or packaging equipment
* Extensive shutdown planning and coordination experience
* Deep knowledge of preventative maintenance programs and CMMS implementation/management
* Experience managing contractors and safe systems of work (Permit to Work, SWMS/JSA)
* A collaborative, solutions-focused approach and comfort working on the floor with operations teams
Desirable:
* Experience using MEX CMMS
* Trade or technical background
* Food manufacturing, meat processing or FMCG experience
Why Join Us
The reward in this role isn’t just the title — it’s the impact.
You will directly contribute to the performance and reliability of the largest Real Pet Food manufacturing site, working alongside a committed operations and maintenance team who rely on strong planning to succeed.
You’ll be part of a business that is investing in automation, capability and growth — while still valuing practical expertise, teamwork and people who roll up their sleeves to get the job done.
What we’re about
Welcome to RPF, where we believe in keeping it Real.
Since 1994, we have been Australia and New Zealand’s pioneers in fresher dog and cat nutrition. Our story is one of passion for a better way to care for pets, a belief in fresher nutrition, and an unwavering commitment to delivering this to pet parents and pets worldwide.
We're dedicated to fostering authentic partnerships, encouraging real ambition, and providing real career opportunities for our employees to make a difference.
Real means fresher ingredients and fresher methods. We'll never stop expanding, innovating, and trying new things. We compete in every pet category and channel, creating favourite brands such as Ivory Coat, Nature’s Gift, V.I.P. Petfoods, and Love ‘Em & Fussy Cat!
Since the establishment of RPF, we have grown to over 900 people across Australia and New Zealand, China, Southeast Asia and Europe.
With the pet industry growing rapidly (a $15 billion industry!) and pets becoming increasingly important in our lives and homes, this is a unique opportunity to be a part of our remarkable growth story and advance your career.
Why join us?
Do work that matters. We’re pioneering in a new area of pet food, always striving for fresher. We’re restless, creating a better life for our pets.
Make an impact and change the game. You won’t be another ‘cog in the wheel’ here. We give full trust and autonomy for you to do your best work – and to make a real difference. Do you have a great idea for a new product or system improvement? We’re all ears!
Growing and global. We’re growing fast! We now have global presence across APAC, and Europe regions and we’re only getting started!
Work with a pack of awesome, genuine people who are passionate about what they do.
Grow your career with us. We’re big believers in lifelong learning. You’ll be given access to LinkedIn Learning, plus opportunities for internal mobility and leadership training to fast-track your career.
Pets our part of our family: Access our Pawrental leave when you adopt a new cat or dog, pet carer and compassionate leave.Generous perks including day off for your anniversary, product discounts, volunteering days to help the community, novated leases, a rewards program and parental leave.
What’s next?
If you're ready to unleash your potential and make a real difference in the booming pet industry, then we want to hear from you! Next steps will include:
* An initial telephone interview followed by 2 face to face interviews and site visit
* 2 work references
* A Pre-Employment Medical including full Drug and Alcohol Testing
We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. Diversity’s not a buzzword here, it’s in our DNA. Diverse perspectives shape our culture and make our work better. That’s why we’re committed to building inclusive teams that represent a variety of backgrounds and skills. If you need any reasonable adjustments, accessibility assistance or would like to note which pronouns you use at any stage of our hiring process, just contact us at accommodations: people&*******@realpetfoodco.com.au. We look forward to hearing from you.
Please note: NO agencies will be considered during this process. We encourage you to refrain from submitting unsolicited profiles