Commercial Finance Manager - Manufacturing

Key Responsibilities

• Partner with senior leadership, engineering, production and commercial teams to drive business performance.
• Analyse financial and operational data from the manufacturing plant to identify trends, risks and opportunities.
• Develop meaningful management reports, dashboards and visualisations that turn complex data into clear business insights.
• Analyse production volumes, product mix, costs, margins, efficiencies and operational performance.
• Develop financial models and scenario analyses to assess the impact of operational and commercial decisions.
• Provide insight into the financial implications of changes in production, product mix, pricing, capacity and costs.
• Support budgeting, forecasting and long-term financial planning.
• Analyse budget versus actual performance and identify the underlying drivers of variances.
• Identify opportunities for cost reduction, efficiency improvement and margin enhancement.
• Partner with operational teams to quantify the financial impact of improvement initiatives.
• Provide clear recommendations to senior management based on financial and operational analysis.
• Challenge assumptions and support fact-based decision-making across the business.
• Develop and maintain relevant KPIs and performance dashboards.
• Identify opportunities to improve profitability through product mix, pricing, cost management and operational efficiency.
• Support strategic and ad-hoc commercial analysis as required.

What We Are Looking For

• CA(SA) qualification is essential.
• Relevant post-qualification experience in commercial finance, financial management, FP&A or finance business partnering.
• Strong experience within a manufacturing or plant environment.
• Demonstrated ability to analyse both financial and operational data.
• Advanced Excel skills.
• Strong financial modelling and scenario-planning capability.
• Experience with Power BI or similar data visualisation tools will be highly advantageous.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing costs, margins, profitability and operational performance.
• Experience with budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis and management reporting.
• SAP experience essential

The Person

We are looking for a CA(SA) who is commercial, analytical and operationally minded.
You should be someone who:

• Looks beyond the numbers to understand why they are moving.
• Can turn complex data into a clear and compelling story.
• Is confident challenging senior stakeholders and asking the right questions.
• Can translate operational activity into financial consequences.
• Thinks in terms of "if we do this, then this will happen."
• Can identify opportunities to improve profitability and quantify the potential benefit.
• Is comfortable working closely with engineers, production and operational teams.
• Has strong commercial judgement and the confidence to make recommendations.
• Communicates complex financial information simply and effectively.
• Is proactive, curious and solutions-oriented.
• Wants to influence decisions rather than simply report on them.

The Opportunity

This is an opportunity for a CA(SA) who wants to be close to the business and have a genuine impact on commercial and operational decision-making.
If you enjoy taking data, finding the story behind it, modelling the options and helping the business make better decisions, this could be an excellent opportunity for you.