Commercial Manager – Retail

Salary: Competitive

Location: Lacock, Wiltshire

Working Hours: Monday – Friday, 40 hours          

Stonegate Farmers Ltd currently have an exciting opening for Commercial Manager to join our Head Office team based out of Lacock, Wiltshire. This is a site-based role, working across both our Packing Centre and Egg Innovation Centre. Reporting into our Executive & Managing Directors, you will be responsible for driving growth within our Retail accounts; delivering against agreed KPIs that are both internal and customer focused.  

About Stonegate Farmers Ltd

Stonegate Farmers Ltd is an integrated free range and organic egg business organised across three divisions comprising farming and agriculture, egg packing and cooked egg processing. Established in 1926 and under new ownership since 2016, we have grown into one the largest free-range and organic egg producers within the UK. The business has been transformed through new investment and has advanced its competitive position within the sector with significant expansion in its core market and recently entered the chilled products market with new processing technologies.

A key distributor for leading premium egg brand Clarence Court, Stonegate Farmers boasts a customer base comprising of major mainstream food retailers, food service outlets and distributors.

The business is looking to continue to build on existing strong retailer relationships, enhance its strong branded reputation with further innovative egg branding, optimise on egg packing performance and extend customer and product development across both it’s Shell Egg and Egg Innovation divisions.

Role & Responsibilities:

• Deliver to a customer centric experience against the pre-agreed strategy, working alongside a range of major UK supermarket retailers with both branded and own-brand products.
• Building customer and internal relationships to achieve common goals.
• Proactive identification of new business opportunities within the customer(s)
• Delivering profitable growth for the account(s) over a sustained period
• Accountable for ensuring commercial negotiations are aligned to strategic objectives.
• Balance the customer requirements with those of the business to ensure both parties are maximising the relationship, including planning and coordinating price increases within the customer
• Implementing new/ seasonal product launches at customer level
• Driving visibility and accessibility of Stonegate products within assigned accounts
• Management and development of the sales team
• Working in conjunction with other functions (Operations, Technical, HR etc) Ensure the Company is meeting the ESG, Ethical and Customer Code of Practice obligations for each customer.

Person Specification:

• Able to display our company values: Respect, Aspire, Courage, One Team, Diversity
• A confident leader with excellent leadership skills.
• Strong interpersonal and communications skills
• Ability to influence internal stakeholders in order to achieve common goals
• High commercial acumen and numerical ability to facilitate effective decision making and
• proactive management
• Excellent organisation, presentation and project management skills.
• Strong stakeholder relationship skills

Qualifications / Experience:

• Extensive, dedicated commercial experience within own label and branded food manufacturing.
• Familiar working with short-shelf live products
• Knowledge of working with retailers, specifically Waitrose, Sainsburys & M&S
• Experience of customer visits, audits and food quality audits such as BRC.
• In-depth knowledge of negotiation strategies and risk/value analysis
• Excellent understanding of policies and business processes on negotiating deals
• Significant and demonstrable experience of negotiating with customers 
• 2 years’ experience in a similar role