General Manager; Sales & Commercial Beverage Ingredients

Our client is a B2B beverage ingredients business supplying innovative ingredient solutions to beverage manufacturers and brands. They are now seeking an ambitious, commercially driven General Manager – Beverage Ingredients to lead and grow the business, with full responsibility for the commercial P&L, sales strategy and customer development across the beverage sector. This is not a traditional Sales Director position. The successful candidate will operate with the mindset of a General Manager
, taking ownership of revenue, margin, customer strategy and commercial performance, while using their deep knowledge of the beverage industry to accelerate growth.

The General Manager will be responsible for developing and executing the commercial strategy for the beverage ingredients business, identifying new market opportunities and strengthening relationships with key beverage manufacturers.

• Full P&L responsibility for the beverage commercial business
• Lead and develop the sales/commercial organisation and drive revenue, gross margin and profitability growth
• Build senior-level relationships with major beverage manufacturers and brands
• Identify and develop new customers, markets and applications
• Expand existing strategic accounts
• Develop pricing and commercial strategies to maximise profitable growth
• Work closely with R&D, Applications, Operations and Marketing to bring new ingredient solutions to market
• Identify emerging trends across functional beverages
• Provide the leadership team and Board with clear commercial strategy, forecasting and performance reporting
• Identify opportunities for partnerships, distributors and potential M&A

We are looking for an experienced commercial leader from the beverage ingredients sector who combines strong sales capability with the strategic mindset and leadership qualities of a General Manager. You are likely to have significant senior sales/commercial experience within beverage ingredients, flavours, sweeteners, functional ingredients, a strong network of relationships with beverage manufacturers and customers, experience managing a commercial P&L or substantial commercial budget, strong understanding of the beverage formulation and ingredient landscape, experience selling complex, technical ingredient solutions rather than commodity products, ability to develop and execute go-to-market strategies.