What are the responsibilities and job description for the Director, Plant Finance (Middle TN) position at Ventek Solutions, LLC?
Ventek Solutions is a leading provider of highly engineered protective packaging solutions serving a diverse base of customers across attractive end markets, including healthcare, cold chain, data centers, electrification, industrial automation and other specialized applications.
Originally established as a carve-out from Sonoco in 2024, Ventek is backed by Black Diamond Capital Management and operates eight manufacturing facilities across the United States and Mexico. The company has made significant progress establishing the infrastructure, leadership team, operating processes and capabilities required to operate successfully as an independent company.
Under CEO Chris Wrobel, Ventek is establishing a high-performance culture centered on commercial excellence, operational execution, accountability and profitable growth.
Ventek 2.0 | Building the Next Chapter
The foundation is substantially in place. Ventek’s next phase is about building on that foundation and accelerating profitable growth.
Ventek 2.0 represents the company’s evolution from carve-out and stand-alone company formation to becoming a premier specialty packaging platform. The strategy is focused on accelerating organic growth, expanding margins, increasing penetration in attractive end markets, improving asset productivity and selectively pursuing acquisitions that broaden Ventek’s capabilities and market reach.
A critical element of Ventek 2.0 is creating greater ownership and accountability at the facility level. Plant Managers are expected to operate as the CEOs of their facilities, with responsibility for safety, quality, service, people, growth and financial performance. The Director, Plant Finance will effectively serve as their CFO counterpart, bringing the financial leadership, operating insight and constructive challenge required to drive profitability, cash generation, asset productivity and returns.
Ventek is also investing significantly in its digital and data capabilities, including an enterprise data architecture designed to create a common source of information across the organization. AI, automation and modern analytical tools are being deployed to simplify processes, standardize ways of working, increase productivity and improve decision-making. Finance will play an important role in translating these capabilities into better business decisions and measurable operating results.
The Opportunity
Ventek is seeking a commercially and operationally oriented Director, Plant Finance to provide financial leadership for its Tullahoma and Mount Pleasant manufacturing facilities. Candidates should be located within commuting distance of these two plant locations.
The Director will report to the Global Controller and operate as a core member of the leadership teams of both facilities, with direct accountability to the respective Plant Managers for business performance. The role will also have significant interaction and visibility with Ventek’s Chief Financial Officer and broader senior leadership team.
This is not a traditional plant accounting role. Financial integrity, cost accounting and controls are essential foundations, but the primary mandate is to use financial and operating insight to improve business performance.
The Director will develop a deep understanding of how each facility creates value at the customer, product, machine and asset level and will work across Operations, Supply Chain, Utilities, Engineering, Commercial Finance, Sales, FP&A, Accounting and IT to improve profitability and returns.
The Director will also be part of a broader Plant Finance leadership team supporting Ventek’s manufacturing network. While accountable for assigned facilities, each Director has a shared responsibility to optimize Ventek’s enterprise performance through common metrics, transparent benchmarking, best-practice sharing, healthy competition and disciplined deployment of volume, capacity and capital.
Key Responsibilities
Plant Financial Leadership & Business Partnership
- Serve as the senior financial leader for Tullahoma and Mount Pleasant and the financial counterpart and strategic business partner to both Plant Managers.
- Own the financial outlook for both facilities, including budgeting, forecasting, profitability, cash generation, working capital and capital requirements.
- Translate financial and operating performance into clear actions, identifying gaps early and establishing corrective actions, owners and timing with plant leadership.
- Lead plant financial and operating reviews focused on KPIs, performance drivers, risks, opportunities and actions rather than simply reporting historical results.
- Provide financial leadership and constructive challenge around major operating, commercial and capital decisions.
Manufacturing Economics & Profitability
- Develop clear visibility into profitability at the facility, customer, product, machine and order level.
- Understand and actively manage the key drivers of manufacturing economics, including material usage, labor efficiency, overhead, absorption, scrap, freight, utilities, throughput, uptime, changeovers, capacity utilization and cost-to-serve.
- Develop plant- and machine-level economics, including contribution per operating hour, and use them to identify constrained or underutilized assets and opportunities to improve profitability and asset productivity.
- Analyze price, volume, mix and cost performance, including whether pricing actions are keeping pace with changes in material, labor, freight, utilities and other input costs.
- Translate sales forecasts into production, capacity, labor, absorption and cost implications and maintain a forward-looking view of the volume and mix required to achieve financial objectives.
- Partner with Operations, Supply Chain, Engineering and Utilities to drive measurable improvements in productivity, material yield, scrap, freight, energy and utility costs, overhead absorption and other controllable costs.
Commercial & Operational Partnership
- Partner with Commercial Finance and Sales to ensure pricing, quoting and new-business decisions reflect accurate plant economics, capacity constraints, tooling, capital requirements and operational complexity.
- Evaluate new-business opportunities based on incremental profitability, capacity utilization, working capital, capital requirements and expected returns.
- Establish disciplined quote-to-actual feedback so actual plant performance continuously improves future costing, pricing and commercial decisions.
- Partner with Operations and Engineering on new-product launches, make/buy decisions, automation, productivity projects, capacity investments and manufacturing alternatives.
- Ensure commercial and operating decisions optimize Ventek enterprise economics rather than an individual customer, product or facility.
Utilities, Asset Productivity & Returns
- Develop a detailed understanding of utility economics, including consumption, rates, demand charges, peak usage and other key cost drivers.
- Partner with Operations, Engineering, Utilities and Supply Chain to reduce utility consumption and cost through operational improvements, efficiency initiatives, rate structures, contracts and sourcing opportunities.
- Use RONA, ROAFE and other appropriate return metrics to evaluate facility performance, commercial opportunities and capital deployment.
- Understand asset utilization, bottlenecks and available capacity and identify opportunities to increase throughput from the existing asset base.
- Lead financial evaluation of capital expenditures and productivity initiatives and conduct post-investment reviews to ensure expected benefits are realized.
- Actively manage working capital and identify opportunities to redeploy capacity, eliminate underutilized assets or invest where doing so improves enterprise returns.
Enterprise & Plant Finance Leadership
- Operate as an active member of Ventek’s Plant Finance leadership team, working collaboratively with peers to improve performance across the manufacturing network.
- Establish and consistently use common KPIs and definitions that allow meaningful comparison across facilities, including profitability, price/cost performance, labor efficiency, material yield, scrap, utility intensity, contribution per operating hour, throughput, uptime, changeover, capacity utilization, working capital, RONA and ROAFE.
- Create healthy competition through transparent performance comparisons while actively sharing best practices and helping replicate successful improvements across the network.
- Partner with Plant Finance peers, Operations and Commercial Finance to determine where production should be placed based on capacity, incremental economics, customer requirements and expected returns.
- Challenge decisions that improve an individual facility’s results but are suboptimal for Ventek overall.
Data, Technology & Finance Transformation
- Partner with IT and Finance leadership to leverage Ventek’s enterprise data architecture to create timely, consistent and actionable financial and operating information.
- Help establish common data, KPI, reporting and process standards across facilities, reducing plant-specific workarounds and creating a consistent fact base for decision-making.
- Embrace AI, automation and modern analytical tools to simplify processes, eliminate manual work, accelerate analysis and improve decision-making.
- Work with Plant Finance peers to develop scalable dashboards, analytical models, processes and tools that can be deployed across Ventek.
- Use technology to shift Finance resources away from data gathering and reconciliation toward analysis, insight and business performance improvement.
Financial Stewardship & Controls
- Ensure the integrity, accuracy and timeliness of facility financial information and maintain strong internal controls.
- Maintain strong cost-accounting disciplines, including standard costs, inventory valuation, COGS and product costing.
- Lead analysis of material, labor, overhead and absorption variances and ensure root causes translate into corrective operating actions.
- Maintain strong inventory controls and actively manage inventory variances, excess and obsolete inventory and working-capital opportunities.
- Ensure appropriate balance sheet reconciliations, accruals and allocations and support timely monthly, quarterly and annual close processes.
- Partner with Corporate Accounting and the Global Controller to continuously improve financial processes, controls and data integrity.
What Success Looks Like
Success will be evident when:
- Plant Managers have a true financial counterpart who helps them run and improve their businesses.
- Profitability and the underlying operating drivers are transparent at the customer, product, machine and facility level.
- Plant leadership uses forward-looking financial and operating information to identify gaps and take corrective action.
- Commercial decisions are supported by accurate plant economics and clear return expectations.
- Capacity, utilities, capital and working capital are actively managed to improve profitability, cash generation and asset returns.
- Plant Finance leaders operate as an integrated team using common metrics, transparent benchmarking, healthy competition and shared best practices to improve the entire manufacturing network.
- Production, capacity and capital decisions optimize Ventek enterprise economics rather than individual facility results.
- Data, automation and AI increasingly simplify processes, standardize ways of working and allow Finance to spend more time generating insight and driving action.
- Finance is viewed by Plant Managers and Operations as an active partner in running and improving the business rather than simply an accounting or reporting function.
Required Skills & Experience
- 7 years of progressive finance experience, preferably within a manufacturing, industrial or engineered-products environment.
- Meaningful experience in plant finance, operations finance, cost accounting, FP&A, commercial finance or a closely related role.
- Strong understanding of manufacturing economics, including material, labor, utilities, overhead, absorption, inventory, capacity utilization and product costing.
- Demonstrated ability to translate financial analysis into operating actions and measurable business results.
- Experience evaluating customer, product, machine and plant profitability and understanding the operational drivers behind financial performance.
- Experience with capital investment analysis, working capital, cash flow and return-on-asset metrics such as RONA, ROAFE or equivalent.
- Ability to understand manufacturing operations at the plant and machine level and constructively challenge operating assumptions.
- Experience partnering directly with Plant Managers, Operations, Sales, Engineering, Supply Chain and other functional leaders.
- Strong analytical capabilities and the ability to simplify complex financial and operating information into clear business insights.
- Curiosity and aptitude for using data, technology, automation and AI-enabled tools to improve processes, analytics and decision-making.
- Strong communication and influencing skills and comfort operating from the shop floor through senior leadership.
- High level of intellectual curiosity, urgency, accountability and attention to detail.
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, Business or a related discipline required. MBA, CPA, CMA or other relevant advanced qualification is a plus.
Leadership Profile
The successful candidate will be a hands-on, commercially minded operating-finance leader who is equally comfortable reviewing a plant P&L, walking the manufacturing floor, challenging the economics of a customer opportunity and discussing capital allocation with senior leadership.
This individual should naturally ask:
Are we producing the right business in the right facility?
Do we understand the true economics at the customer, product and machine level?
Are we using our people, energy, capacity and assets effectively?
What is preventing this facility from performing at the level of the best plant in the network?
Are we earning an appropriate return on the assets and capital employed?
Can data, technology or AI help us simplify the process or make a better decision?
What actions can we take now to improve profitability, cash generation and returns?
And are we making the decision that is best for Ventek overall, not simply for this facility?
The Director, Plant Finance will play an important role in embedding this discipline throughout Ventek and helping convert the ambitions of Ventek 2.0 into sustainable improvements in growth, profitability, cash generation, asset productivity, operating efficiency and enterprise returns.