Commercial Finance Director — Packaging Substrate, Yield and Contract Margin

The mandate

Packaging margin can deteriorate while the order book and average utilisation both improve. A multi-plant manufacturer is creating a commercial-finance director to expose that deterioration at customer and specification level, particularly where substrate prices, print complexity and short-run requirements interact. The continuing seat carries an initial eighteen-month agenda to reconstruct contract economics and quote governance. Employment is open-ended; the director will remain the business's financial partner for pricing, product mix and customer profitability after the initial costing reset has been adopted.

You will begin with the sources of difference between a quoted job and the production actually required to satisfy it. Material consumption, trim and setup loss, artwork changes and customer-driven delivery patterns need an explicit economic bridge. A standard margin based on a stable substrate index can become misleading if pass-through timing differs from purchase timing. Finance must show whether a contract pays for its complexity and cash demand rather than assume that a large customer deserves the same commercial terms across every specification it orders.

Twenty-one analysts and specialists support the director through costing and plant-finance leads. You can concur on quotes within approved thresholds, revise economic assumptions and require escalation of exceptional pass-through or credit terms. Commercial leaders negotiate customers; operations owns yield improvement and production routing. The CFO approves material policy changes and the managing director decides strategic account exceptions. Your office cannot guarantee technical yield or impose a production method. It must produce evidence that makes the financial consequences of those operating and commercial choices clear before a commitment is accepted.

The first programme should leave specification-level cost evidence, a tested quote-to-actual review and customer negotiations informed by the cost of service complexity. Later accountability includes periodic pass-through calibration, controller development and support for capacity decisions based on actual product economics. Pune is the base, with factory and key-account visits used to validate assumptions. The director is expected to distinguish a temporary material movement from a persistently unprofitable contract and to present actionable alternatives rather than simply announce a margin gap that other teams cannot explain.

What you will own

• Define specification-level cost models using material consumption, setup loss and service requirements, exposing contracts whose apparent margin depends on production assumptions that actual jobs repeatedly fail to achieve.
• Decide financial concurrence thresholds for quotes and renewals, routing exceptional indexation, credit or minimum-run terms to authorised leaders with quantified consequences before customer commitments are made.
• Build the quote-to-actual margin bridge with plant evidence, separating substrate price movement from yield loss and customer scope changes so each adverse outcome receives an appropriate decision owner.
• Challenge material pass-through mechanisms against purchase and settlement timing, identifying when a nominally protected contract still leaves the manufacturer funding an extended margin or working-capital gap.
• Recommend customer-service alternatives using economic evidence for shorter runs, revised specifications or delivery patterns, preserving the commercial leader's negotiating authority while making the cost of strategic concessions visible.
• Develop costing and plant-finance specialists in exception analysis, ensuring recurring variance leads to revised assumptions or contract action rather than another report of unexplained adverse absorption.

Candidate qualifications

• Have at least twenty-eight years of finance experience with senior commercial or manufacturing scope in packaging, food, FMCG or related industrial supply. Describe a contract or specification whose economics you reconstructed from production evidence. Explain what the average-cost view missed, the personal judgement you supplied and how the finding changed a quote, renewal or customer-service decision.
• Demonstrate practical costing depth across material, yield, changeovers and contribution, with a rigorous professional finance background or equivalent proven expertise. You must understand why substrate indexation can fail to protect margin when purchase and customer reset timing differ. Experience should include reconciling quoted assumptions to actual job evidence, not only maintaining standard costs or reporting aggregate plant variances.
• Evidence constructive challenge with commercial and operations teams where a strategically important customer consumed disproportionate complexity or cash. Show the alternatives you evaluated and the decision boundaries you respected. The required leadership does not assume every low-margin account should be exited; it makes the strategic concession explicit, funded and reviewable rather than concealed through optimistic yield or cost allocation.
• Bring experience leading costing analysts and plant-finance partners, including coaching them to investigate source records and explain uncertainty. You should have corrected repeated quote-to-actual gaps, developed deputies and maintained customer confidentiality during negotiations. Regular factory exposure and clear communication are essential to a role whose credibility depends on understanding the production process without claiming ownership of technical yield certification.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 9 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-026.