John Hill
Director (Fmr. Technical Director British Pepper and Spice)
The John Hill Partnership
John is a highly experienced food industry technical specialist having worked throughout his 40 year career in both branded and retailer branded businesses. John’s specialisms include technical governance, incident and risk management and supply chain food security. John worked across all categories of food manufacture from chilled to frozen to ambient. He spent the majority of his career working for Mars Inc. in a number of senior European technical roles culminating in his position as Head of Market Quality and Food Safety for Western Europe. Whilst in this role John managed all of the customer and consumer technical interfaces and related incident management. For the 12 years prior to establishing his own consultancy, John was Technical Director of British Pepper and Spice, the UK’s leading supplier of dried herbs and spices to the retail, food service and food manufacturing sectors. As a key member of the senior team in this £80m turnover business, he has played a leading role in building a secure supply chain, and managed the challenges of having suppliers spread across the world. This has given him first hand and wide exposure to the issues of global food authenticity, quality and safety. In addition he has tirelessly promoted the importance of food integrity to all of the major UK food manufacturers and retailers and in 2017 was awarded Technical Supplier of the Year by Marks and Spencer. John has built strong working relationships with the majority of the major retailers and food manufacturers in the UK and Ireland, as well as the regulators and has developed a deep understanding of their sector specific requirements. As a former Board member of the European Spice Association and current member of the Executive Board of the UK Seasoning and Spice Association, John has broad experience of the issues and challenges faced by the UK food industry. He has travelled extensively to the source countries of dried herbs and spices and is well known amongst many of the leading global suppliers. John has built up a close working relationship with Professor Chris Elliott and his team at Belfast’s Queens University (QUB), Institute of Global Food Security. He was instrumental in establishing a consortium of all of the major UK retailers and packers of dried herbs and spices which now works with QUB to develop non-targeted methods for identifying adulterants in food ingredients. His extensive network includes the Food and Drink Federation and the Food Standards Agency with a specific focus on allergen risk management and the prevention of food fraud. Finally, John is a frequent speaker at international conferences in the USA, India, Europe and the UK, sharing his expertise and knowledge of the challenges in the dried herb and spice supply chain with the suppliers, processors, retailers and regulators.