General Manager Operations

Executive Leadership Role | COO Pathway | Auckland, New Zealand

Vitaco Health is Australasia’s fastest-growing and most exciting sports and nutrition business. Home to an outstanding portfolio of category-leading brands across sports nutrition, supplements, and health foods — including Musashi, Nutra-Life, Healtheries and Athena, we are guided by a single vision: Empowering Healthier Lives!

With double-digit growth year-on-year and ambitious expansion plans across existing and new international markets, Vitaco is scaling rapidly, both in capability and in impact. Our success is powered by more than 650 people across New Zealand and Australia, and by a culture that is genuinely distinctive. In 2025, Vitaco was named an HRD 5-Star Employer of Choice, reflecting extraordinary engagement across our workforce and a values-led environment where people thrive.

We operate world-class manufacturing facilities in Auckland and manage a diverse and complex portfolio of over 400 SKUs across supplements, sports nutrition powders, bars, and health food products. Our operations are underpinned by strong quality, safety and regulatory frameworks, enabling consistent, high-quality outcomes at scale.

The Opportunity

Vitaco is seeking an exceptional executive leader to join the business as General Manager, Operations. This is a pivotal role with accountability for delivering Vitaco’s strategic Production pillar and for shaping the performance, capability, and future readiness of our operations across the group.

The role offers significant scope, influence, and visibility across the organisation and will appeal to a leader of genuine scale who is motivated by complexity, growth and the opportunity to leave a lasting legacy within a high-performing FMCG environment.

Reporting to the COO, this role holds end-to-end responsibility for manufacturing across multiple Auckland sites, engineering, warehousing (across four Auckland sites) of raw and packaging materials, and domestic and international distribution of finished goods. It sits at the operational core of the organisation and is central to supporting growth, performance and operational resilience.

This is not a standard operations role, but a senior leadership position requiring the ability to translate strategy into disciplined execution while building capability across a complex, multi-site environment. For the right person, it also provides exposure, breadth, and executive-level remit that positions the role as a potential successor for the Chief Operations Officer (COO).

Strategic Focus

The General Manager, Operations will play a key role in evolving Vitaco’s operations, including the advancement of automation, digital capability and the considered use of AI to enhance planning, manufacturing performance and decision-making.

Equally important is the responsibility to build and sustain a healthy, values-led culture across operations, role-modelling Vitaco’s values (We Care, We Act, We Succeed) and fostering an engaged, high-performing workforce aligned to our purpose. Our people are our competitive advantage, and this role is central to protecting and amplifying that strength as we grow.

The Candidate

You will be a senior operations or manufacturing executive with a strong track record in complex, regulated environments such as supplements, health food, sports nutrition or adjacent FMCG manufacturing. You bring experience leading large, multi-site operations, managing significant cost bases and delivering transformation through people, systems, automation and technology, ideally within a trans-Tasman or similarly scaled market context.

You are commercially astute, operationally credible and comfortable operating at enterprise level, with judgement, leadership presence and ambition consistent with roles of the highest calibre. Personal alignment with health, wellbeing and values-led leadership is essential.

The Proposition

Based in Auckland, New Zealand, this is a full-time executive leadership role offering a competitive executive remuneration package of NZD 250,000+, plus short-term incentives and relocation support for international candidates. This is a rare opportunity to shape the operational backbone of a purpose-led, high-growth nutrition business, within an organisation recognised for its culture, talent, engagement and people leadership.  For an executive of ambition and calibre, it offers a powerful springboard into broader enterprise leadership in a business committed to developing its leaders and investing in long-term capability.

This appointment is being managed as a confidential executive search. To protect candidate privacy and ensure a robust and equitable search process, applications will only be accepted via the online application portal.

For a confidential discussion regarding this opportunity, please contact Bianca Lapusan via email at Bianca.Lapusan@vitaco.co.nz

Applications close 8.00pm Sunday 22 February 2026.