Rosier Bailey

Linpac Packaging is an autonomous division of Linpac group, manufacturing primary food packaging. Products include trays from expanded polystyrene and rPET, PVC films and Barrier Films. The group had two other principal operating divisions: Allibert (returnable transit packaging – food, automotive and general industrial sectors) and Ropak (US based small containers (pails) business).

Assignment

(a)   Create initiative based cross regional and cross functional integrated strategic plan

(b)   Drive improvements in margin management in commercial & financial functions to ensure financial cohesion of initiatives, budgets and reforecasts to maintain gross margin in volatile commercial and raw material markets.

(c)    Investigate performance issues and advise on corrective actions

(d)   Provide interim support to the group finance function during the transition to new ownership.

(e)   Design and delivery of refinancing model for ABL facility.

 

Outcomes

(a)   High level of interaction with European business leaders and key members of their teams. Design, implementation, and subsequent improvement to process and models. Delivered a robust cross regional, cross functional set of regional and consolidated plans over a five year horizon built from specific initiatives with local buy-in.

(b)   Supported regionally based Sector Commercial Controllers to ensure effective cohesion, and enable business opportunities to be progressed. Reviewed and challenged commercial trends by region, sector, and product group, to maximise business revenues and ensuring the use of pricing management methodologies and toolkits to enable improved customer profitability. Use of bridges to enhance understanding of performance drivers within the business, in particular, complex margin situations.

(c)    Worked with local teams in under-performing regions to identify remedial actions, quantify impacts and drive improvements. Provided clear information and a forward view to enable timely reaction. Ensured cross regional impacts were understood and robust quantification incorporated in proposals, including new regions and new production lines.

(d)   Budget review of operating divisions, preparation of group budget presentation to lenders, and definition and operation of margin analysis by operating division plus core product range.

(e)  Robust model created with full sensitivity functionality, linked to strategic plan. Assumptions fine-tuned with experience of actual ABL facility functioning, and model used as a tool to identify shortcomings in facility availability in early life. Six month review showed excellent alignment and correlation of model vs reality.

 

Client comments: 'a flexible professional, able to deliver requirements in complex and pressured situations. Earns support and trust and achieves what he sets out to do, a pleasure to work with' Richard Paul, Group Finance Director