James Wipperman Email & Phone Number

London, England, United Kingdom

Northampton, England, United Kingdom

As the head of brewing and processing for Carlsberg UK, I was part of the company leadership team and responsible for delivering the departmental priorities and targets within set budgetary constraints, with a team of 41 technical brewers, shift managers, and operational staff reporting into me across brewhouse, fermentation, filtration, and bulk movement. In this role I assessed and managed the CAPEX priorities of the department determining the budget for the department, the management and development of staff, and the recruitment and retention of employees. I was also responsible for departmental budget setting and management, including the setting of targets and ensuring delivery, and managing the head count. Working closely with the commercial arms of the company, I brought new technologies to Northampton, with global suppliers such as Meura, as well as Krones and GEA, and worked with global craft brewing companies, such as the Brooklyn Brewery, to lead NPD for the UK market. I had direct responsibilities for driving health and safety priorities, and promoting positive safety behaviours.

Northampton, United Kingdom

In this role I was responsible for brewhouse and fermentation operations at Carlsberg's Northampton brewery, with a production of over four million hl per annum. I worked on improving efficiency of production, cost reduction, meeting quality demands, running projects across production, implementing trials and process improvement, and developing staff to improve departmental performance. I have run projects to cut brewhouse energy usage by over 10%, optimised main product recipes to increase site capacity by 15%, delivered company record levels of RFT results, and exceeded budgeted targets for extract recovery. I also sat on the departmental health and safety team and developed and from trial to commercial release new products for local brands. During COVID I raised the capacity of the site in relation to core brands by approx 10% through process changes despite the financial constraints due to the pandemic, which allowed San Miguel to become the UK's fastest growing consumer good of 2020 and the company to gain market share during a volatile time for breweries. I also led and implemented such projects as process adaption for alpha acid loss reduction on core products to reduce costs without compromising quality, led the implementation and CAPEX of a new brewing material on site to raise site capacity of the site core brand by 16%, identified and reduced brewery water usage as part of working towards a target of 250,000 hl per year reduction in water, and led moving the brewing of a new global brand from Europe to the UK. I also led world-first trials of a new malt variety that is forecast to cut energy usage in the brewhouse by nearly half, and water usage by 50,000 hl a year, from 2023.

Bedford

In this position I managed a team of eight operators across brewing and filtration. At a time of change the focus was on process improvement, increasing staff capability, and introducing culture change. I introduced methods of continuous improvement, expanded flexibility in operator skills, and ran root cause analysis on brewery issues, implementing methods such as “5-why”. I specialised in improvements within fermentation and yeast handling, but also investigated cross-brewery processing issues.I ran production meetings for the brewing department, and was responsible for the clearance of product pre-packaging. I organised and oversaw shifts to ensure deadlines were met, and ran one-to-ones for my team in order to improve engagement and performance.

Faversham, Kent

In this role I managed brewing operations, filtration, cask, and keg for a national brewery. Brewing own brand ales and lagers, as well as contract global beers such as Samuel Adams Boston Lager and Asahi, I oversaw the whole production process, provided technical support and guidance, and managed a team of twenty two, and additional agency workers, across four departments.The role required a focus on process improvement, efficiency and quality control, as well as new product and packaging development, and coordination of production. I worked to reduce waste of product and effluent, and worked closely with the Head Brewer and Senior Brewer.Amongst other new products, I developed the new flagship brand, Spitfire Gold, from the pilot brewery through to production for bottle and cask. I have managed major culture change across operation staff, implemented training programmes for staff, had recommendations of process change implemented by the company to reduce waste water usage, and was given responsibility for running projects, such as kieselguhr reduction. I also took on management of the brewery yeast programme and cultures, requiring excellent short and long term planning skills, and knowledge of yeast culture processing.

West Sussex, United Kingdom, United Kingdom

Lead production role for a leading UK craft brewery, delivering efficiencies and NPD projects.

London

Perth, Australia

Master Brewer

Msc In Brewing And Distilling, Distinction

Ba In Philosophy, Politics, And Economics, Social Science, Ba Hons 2:1