Head of Strategy & Business Development

Our clients
We are working on multiple mandates for clients in the agri‑commodity space. They already have strong brand recognition, ample capacity, and significant financial resources.

What they now need from the incumbent is the commercial intelligence, execution capability, and go‑to‑market strategy to translate these assets into contracted revenue at scale and pull ahead in a fiercely competitive market. The Saudi flour sector is going through its most significant transformation in decades. In this environment, the ability to proactively originate, structure, and win B2B commercial relationships is the primary source of sustainable competitive advantage.

• Design and execute a full B2B customer mapping and tiering exercise across industrial bakeries, food manufacturers, QSR, HORECA, and distributors.
• Build a key account acquisition strategy that moves the business from reactive, legacy coverage to proactive, partnership‑based relationships.
• Establish a market intelligence framework to track competitor moves, pricing, and customer dynamics and turn that into clear commercial actions.

• Co‑design the marketing agenda with the commercial and marketing teams.
• Develop technical marketing collateral, application‑specific product positioning, and account‑based marketing programs that support the B2B sales motion and deepen share of wallet with target customers.
• Lead the creation of a commercial blueprint for export into East Africa and the GCC, including target customer mapping, logistics routes, pricing architecture, and regulatory requirements.
• Ensure the business is ready to activate this plan once wheat procurement liberalization and export conditions are fully in place.

• Own the go‑to‑market strategy for functional and specialty flours (whole wheat, gluten‑free, fortified), linking the R&D pipeline to both B2B and B2C demand signals.
• Develop a pricing strategy that optimizes margin mix across subsidized bulk, unsubsidized B2B, and premium B2C tiers.
• Accelerate the shift toward consumer‑packaged flour as the high‑margin growth frontier, especially in pack sizes of 10 kg and below.
• Capitalize on the faster growth of whole wheat, gluten‑free, and functional/fortified flours by building brand equity and retail presence that captures a disproportionate share of this premium pool.

This is not a classic FMCG or food marketing role. The ideal profile comes from commodities and agri‑food, because the value is created at the intersection of procurement economics, B2B contracting, and consumer behaviour.

A commodities‑trained strategist can connect upstream procurement dynamics to downstream commercial strategy.

Commodity markets are fundamentally B2B. Experience in trading, milling inputs, or agri‑commodities builds the ability to structure long‑term supply relationships, frame value propositions around volume and service, and design pricing that locks in key accounts.

East Africa and GCC flour flows are driven by benchmarks, freight economics, currency risk, and often sovereign or quasi‑sovereign buyers. This is familiar territory for someone who has grown up in commodity or agri‑trading environments.

What makes this hire rare is the combination: a commodities‑trained mind that also understands how commodity products are branded and sold to end consumers. The person must be able to bridge the gap between grain economics and on‑shelf brand and pack strategy.