European Product Management & Sustainability Director

Company Description

To be the leading producer of glass bottles and jars worldwide you need passion, commitment and innovation baked into the very fabric of a business and its people. For more than 120 years, our glass makers have honed their craft—channeling their creativity into more than 1,800 patents held today. When you join O-I you become part of that story.

O-I has more than a century of experience crafting pure, sustainable, brand‑building glass packaging for many of the world’s best‑known food and beverage brands. We are proud to provide high quality glass packaging for beer, wine, spirits, food, non‑alcoholic beverages, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. We are dedicated to make what matters to shape a healthier, more sustainable and more exciting world. We transform the industry to make glass more relevant and more accessible to more people.

The European Product Management & Sustainability Director will be responsible for overseeing a department that will refine the existing product portfolio to be the most efficient, profitable and relevant to market demands, as well as assess and control the addition of prospective new products and new product capabilities to support O‑I’s sales growth, profitability and fit to win objectives. In short, this means having the right range of products, at the right prices based on clearly defined costs to serve, at the optimum operational complexity, supported by a robust process of assessing/recommending new products.

Working across multiple European markets, the EU Product Management & Sustainability Director role will be responsible for developing a portfolio strategy, based on detailed market analysis of where to play (WTP) and how to win (HTW) to assess sales opportunities requiring new products to be developed, recommending which opportunities be approved, as well as overseeing the execution of approved NPD. The role will also be responsible for interpreting the WTP/HTW market analysis to identify strategic gaps in O‑I’s European product capabilities and recommending strategies to fill them.

On the sustainability side, the role will also be responsible for creating and managing a vital commercial sustainability capability, with the purpose of managing the integration of current and future market, customer, and O‑I sustainability strategies and obligations into O‑I Europe’s way of working. Including adapting the product range around key trends like light weighting, positioning O‑I as a leading expert in packaging impact initiatives like returnable/reusable bottles and coordinating customer sustainability reporting requirements like supply chain energy/carbon reduction initiatives.

• Portfolio Performance: Maximize the fit, profit and operational efficiency of the existing product portfolio.
• NPD Driven Growth: Assess and recommend business strategy and/or sales team generated new product opportunities based on strategic fit, operational capability/complexity and profit mix improvement to support the growth objectives of the European business.
• Commercial Sustainability market leadership: Establish O‑I as the customer’s preferred advisor and commercial partners in meeting their sustainability obligations/objectives by consolidating, organizing & integrating the various existing/emerging work streams into a structured commercial COE.
• Team Management: Coach and inspire a high‑performing team, instilling a strong understanding of the end‑to‑end business processes that embeds them in the business’ way of working and holding them accountable for delivering the expected results.
• Market Intelligence: Continuously scan the market for trends, competitor activity, and customer needs to inform sales strategy and uncover new growth avenues.
• Cross‑functional
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Establish strong cross functional relationships with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Global Accounts and especially Supply Chain to understand operational capability, capacity and cost to serve in order to deliver seamless portfolio recommendation execution.
• Performance Management: Set clear KPIs such as % reduction in product portfolio, volume of appropriate new products…