Plant Controller

Overview

Plant Controller role at Tate & Lyle. This role provides critical support in budgeting, forecasting and financial analysis by serving in an individual contributor capacity. This role focuses on delivering accurate financial insights and reports to support the FP&A team and Finance business partners. The Finance Manager, Plant Controller ensures maximal data quality and consistency across financial processes within the team, playing a vital role in supporting financial decision-making.

This role is not open to outside agencies.

Business Support

• Advisor and business partner to the plant manager(s) for financial and legal tasks
• Proactive member of the plant leadership team, providing financial leadership to the business
• Provide decision support on short-, medium- and long-term issues by using data, sensitivity analysis, information and business understanding
• Partner with the plant operations teams to identify, support and measure productivity & continuous improvement projects within the plant
• Collaborate with Specialist teams, including Tax and Treasury to create effective and integrated financial solutions
• Support the creation of the financial statements in accordance with local and IFRS regulation

Cost, cash and working capital management

• In liaison with GSS and other functions (e.g. purchasing) ensure the reliability of cost information in SAP and other information systems (e.g. bills of materials, standard and actual costs at product level)
• Support the business in setting cost management and cost reduction plans. Monitor and comment upon achievement versus these plans
• Understand and monitor the drivers of plant working capital, including the coordination of physical inventory counts and cycle counts and overseeing any necessary stock adjustments (finished & semi-finished goods, spare parts, ingredients, raw materials and auxiliaries)

Budgeting, Planning and Forecasting

• AOP process owner for the plant(s). Coordinate process of fixed cost budgeting, bill of materials and master recipe development including energy setup, maintenance planning and depreciation (indirect and SGA cost where applicable)
• Support long term plan development (like AOP process with lower level of detail)
• Develop & monitor coherent and integrated KPIs and performance measures relevant to the plant
• Prepare sensitivities and understand the relevant risks and opportunities in the plan/ forecast to build confidence that it is robust and achievable

Performance Analysis and Reporting

• Analyse and prepare commentary on management reports prepared by GSS
• Prepare appropriate variance and other analysis and commentaries where not provided by GSS
• Comment on costs by product, cost centre and plant; discuss periodic variances and their causes
• Follow up causes of variances, agree actions with non-finance teams to fix them and monitor completion
• Translate business data and information into accurate financial models showing possible impact to support decision-making
• Primary accountability for dealing with requests from global management, global operations FPA and group finance related to the plant

Capital Investment

• Support engineering and other non-finance colleagues to develop and analyse prospective capital investment projects, prepare CAPEX documentation and provide financial impact calculations
• Support the Supply Chain FD in the fulfilment of their responsibilities in this area
• Monitor and control capital investment projects during and after implementation against the budget
• Prepare post-investment review of the project, in collaboration with central operations/ commercial/ strategy teams

Controlling

• Ensure and coordinate timely and proper execution of the monthly, quarterly and year-end closing processes (SAP)
• Ensure adequate and robust internal controls are in place and operating effectively
• Ensure the Group’s policies and minimum control standards are understood and applied within the plant
• Collaborate and support internal and external audits
• Continuously evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of finance processes relating to the plant, and their consistency with finance processes across the rest of the global plant network
• Proactively…