Plant Network Footprint Recovery Leader — Specialty Chemicals

The mandate

Two years of weaker coatings demand, an expiring emissions permit and repeated reactor outages have left six European plants carrying duplicate grades, stranded utilities and contradictory customer promises. The former regional operations executive departed after successive budget rounds deferred closure choices while site teams protected local volume. Working capital, service and process-safety exposure now move together, so isolated cost programmes cannot restore control.

The interim enters within ten days for fourteen months, taking the operating seat through network diagnosis, board footprint choice, three grade-transfer waves, one plant conversion and permanent-leader selection. The approved scenario must be locked by week ten before annual customer contracts reset. Eight closing weeks are reserved for successor shadowing, site handoffs and a full network-balancing exercise; routine optimisation cannot extend the term.

Handover requires a contribution-and-constraint model by grade, validated reactor and permit envelopes, customer qualification paths, inventory buffers, tolling fallbacks, site labour assumptions, shutdown triggers and accountable transfer leaders. Success is demonstrated when the permanent appointee absorbs an unplanned reactor loss during the final transfer wave and reallocates production without a safety breach, hidden margin destruction or consultant-owned calculation.

The leader may change grade allocation inside approved technical windows, stop transfers lacking process-safety or customer evidence, release €115 million of authorised transition funding, replace workstream leads and negotiate temporary tolling within delegated terms. Plant closures, compulsory workforce actions, permit representations and capital above delegation require board approval. Site directors retain statutory duties; Quality releases product and Commercial owns customer price decisions.

Product reformulation, corporate refinancing, pension negotiation, enterprise ERP replacement and unrelated procurement savings remain outside scope. The interim cannot dilute safety cases to preserve utilisation, promise employment outcomes before consultation, force an unqualified customer transfer or count stranded fixed cost as a realised saving. Any local exception must expire against a named network milestone and visible economic consequence.

Why this seat is open

The previous executive left after the board rejected a third footprint plan built from site-level aspirations rather than common constraints. Temporary authority is needed before permits and customer contracts close the decision window, while the search targets a permanent operator prepared to own the selected network rather than reopen it.

What you will own

• Reconstruct grade-level economics across yield, energy, labour, logistics, permit limits, qualification and stranded fixed cost.
• Decide the recommended plant, line, tolling and customer allocation under four demand and outage scenarios.
• Sequence grade transfers through technical trial, customer approval, inventory build, commercial notice and stable-rate production.
• Protect process-safety, quality and environmental gates when utilisation pressure makes local exceptions financially tempting.
• Direct authorised transition capital, expert capacity and outage windows toward binding network constraints and risk retirement.
• Command four simulations covering reactor loss, permit delay, customer rejection and toll-manufacturer quality failure.
• Hand operating authority to the successor after an independent network rebalance during the final grade-transfer wave.

Candidate qualifications

• Held regional manufacturing authority across multi-plant specialty chemicals, coatings, additives or similarly constrained batch processes.
• Executed plant closure, conversion and grade transfer while preserving process safety, permits and customer qualification.
• Built decision-grade network economics that separated avoidable cost, stranded cost, margin leakage and transition cash.
• Negotiated tolling and temporary capacity without surrendering intellectual property, quality control or customer continuity.
• Worked constructively with site leaders and employee representatives through evidence-led footprint decisions and consultation boundaries.
• Transferred a chosen network to permanent leadership through a live outage and contested customer migration.

Non-negotiables

• Available within ten days for Antwerp leadership, ten plant residencies and all four allocation simulations.
• Direct chemicals footprint execution is required; strategy modelling without line operating authority is insufficient.
• Will disclose toll manufacturers, chemical customers, engineering firms, investors, unions and environmental-advisory relationships.
• Will not approve unsafe transfers, make unapproved closure promises, sign permit representations or exceed capital delegation.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a plant-footprint decision where apparent savings disappeared after stranded cost and qualification were modelled.
2. 49 words maximum. How did you protect process-safety gates during a commercially urgent grade transfer?
3. 49 words maximum. State your Antwerp availability and the largest network transition budget you personally controlled.