Commercial Manager – Wine Ingredients, Southern Europe

Updated: 22nd January 2024

JOB SPECIFICATION

CPL Executive Search is assisting a leading global ingredients player which provides active dried yeast and integrated fermentation solutions for the global wine and beverage market. This exciting new opportunity is for an experienced wine industry expert to further extend its activities in the S. European Wine End Use Market (EUM).

Its R&D efforts (backed by the resources of divisional turnover €1.32b in 2013) have extended its classical portfolio with well-established “next generation” yeasts and fermentation aids.

The role has a large degree of autonomy in commercializing cultures, enzymes, products and technologies plus providing technical/application support.

A recognized technical expert, the individual will be self-motivated, independent, with extensive experience in sales and passion for the industry.

Position

  • Representing a global testing facility and ingredient company in S.E. UK, this position would suit an individual hoping to develop his/her career in product management.
  • The successful candidate will adopt a market based approach to identify companies or partners for co-development opportunities.
  • They will manage the product portfolio at both B2B and B2C levels.
  • In addition, this person will seek to develop marketing materials to help the company successfully launch products for its clients.
  • Manage both ingredient and final formulation products through all processes including human volunteer testing to introduction and launch in a structured and transparent way.
  • Prepare support materials for introduction and launch of client’s portfolio products.
  • The position will report to the CEO and CSO.

Key Duties & Responsibilities

Business Development

  • Consolidate/secure the distribution network for our portfolio and products.
  • Develop business plans & actions for each distributor/customer/Region.
  • Assist distributors and their customers with technical, sales and marketing support.
  • Manage introduction of new wine EUM technologies/Others to market.
  • Canvass new markets and identify sales opportunities.
  • Forward a monthly report of the business activity to Manager.

Sales Management

  • Focus primarily on growing sales of our portfolio/products Southern Europe.
  • Ensure distributors/customers are increasing their business with strong focus on Wine key account development.
  • Set up review and manage distributor agreements as required per growth agenda.
  • Provide accurate sales & demand planning forecasts as per current ways of working.
  • Complete Meeting Reports, 12 week meeting planners and Opportunity Tracker as required.
  • Provide individual customer sales and marketing strategies aligned to EMEA Wine / Others EUM to REUL.
  • Monitor sales and provide explanations for growth/decline of volume and/or revenues.
  • Provide annually detailed sales, marketing and travel budgets.

Marketing

  • Work with Marketing team and other Functional leads to develop and deliver marketing materials to market.
  • Generate and update marketing materials (TDS, posters, leaflets etc.) in each country & language.
  • Brief Marketing functional lead to develop advertisements, banners, POS materials, etc.
  • Assist with contacts to coordinate the marketing campaign in connection with magazine editors, trade shows, etc.
  • Attend to main wine tradeshows and conferences to increase brand awareness, promote our portfolio, pick up trends & competitor information, etc.

Technical/Applications

  • Initiate and follow trials with Universities/Institutes and any outsourced partners.
  • Elaborate technical reports and articles to be published in media (trade mags, Internet).
  • Monitor technological and competitive introductions and alert RAL Applications Lead.
  • Undertake technical visits with distributors’ key accounts & Customers highlighting the technical advantages of our product.
  • Provide technical support to our customer base during vintage and beyond.
  • Organize wine tastings to support Client’s wine technologies promotion.
  • Attend to technical seminars/congresses related to wine / other EUM / technologies.
  • Present our company, product and technical capabilities in seminars.

Experience

Essential Experience

  • Experience on same / similar fields of 5 years ( Min ).
  • Technical background: in-depth fermentation knowledge, winemaking, quality management, wine tasting, food process engineering, R&D (biotechnology and oenology).
  • Business to business, sales and marketing strategy development and implementation.
  • Behavioral: daily work in multiple languages (English, Italian).
  • Project Management, Team player, cross-functional management, cross-cultural competence.

Package

  • Salary will be competitive with bonus structure, medical insurance and pension.

Interview Process

  • Potentially a 3 stage process via video conference. Psychometric testing maybe used.

[This post has now been filled but we are always interested in adding suitably qualified candidates to our network. You can connect to us via LinkedIn  or by email. Please note that CPL Executive Search works exclusively on retained executive search engagements commissioned by our clients and does not offer placement services or find positions for candidates].