Product Manager - ChainCraft

In this vacant Product Manager position, your focus will be on product management of existing products, as well as on the development of new products and applications. You lead projects and programs, you have refreshing ideas and can also substantiate them with data and strategies.

With your entrepreneurial mentality, you will play an important role in putting Product Management within ChainCraft on the map and further developing it.

Being part of the commercial team, you particularly work closely together with the Sales & Business Development Managers, and you hold the interface function with R&D, Operations and Quality.

You will report to the CEO.

Your Key responsibilities

• Portfolio management: You manage and maintain the entire product portfolio, consisting of the 4 product lines of different types of fully bio-based fatty acids. You analyze the sales and turnover performance of new and existing products and translate your ideas into an optimally profitable product portfolio that best matches the customer's needs.
• You develop the product strategy per product line, including: positioning, pricing, planning product launches, and product marketing (branding and promotion).
• You are active as project leader of product development projects (including improvement products, new product concepts, innovation, packaging, raw materials), based on market research, voice of customer, input from trade shows, and trends. You make business plans for investment issues in Production, and you manage toll manufacturing projects.
• You respond to product-related customer questions, and collect the necessary information to draw up a business case.
• You make sure ChainCraft’s products can be applied in the different markets within the scope of applicable law and regulations and certification schemes.
• You act as the connecting factor and maintain contacts with various departments within the ChainCraft organization: Commercial, R&D, Operations, Quality.

ChainCraft is an innovative circular biotechnology scale-up, founded in 2010. The company owns and operates a mid-scale production plant in Amsterdam, producing fatty acids through upcycling organic residual flows (fruit and vegetable residues), using a unique, patented fermentation technology. As a result of many years of research, ChainCraft's sustainable fatty acids have now proven that they are an excellent commercial alternative to fatty acids which are originally formed from petrochemicals or palm oil. ChainCraft’s products are fully bio-based, price competitive as being less vulnerable to price volatility, and are of high quality.

In the market, fatty acids are applied for many different purposes, and serve in particular as an important ingredient or raw material in the food, feed, agriculture, as well as in chemical industry.

Currently, ChainCraft sells its fatty acids mainly in the animal nutrition industry, as these fatty acids, used as feed additives, promote animal health and reduce the need for antibiotics. Additionally, ChainCraft’s fatty acids have also a great international potential in the food industry (a.o. flavor & fragrance), as herbicide in agriculture, and with probably the greatest potential in the chemical industry (a.o. in home & personal care, paints & coatings, plastics, lubricants). (See ChainCraft’s 4 product lines in www.chaincraft.com/products/ )

With a total investment of around € 30 mln, ChainCraft has successfully scaled up their fermentation process to a semi-commercial-demonstration plant with a production capacity of 2,000 tons of fatty acids per year, upcycling 20,000 tons of organic waste each year. 

ChainCraft is now ready for further expansion. ChainCraft's ambition is to scale up current production (more than tenfold) to multiple full-scale factories, to serve multiple markets and international customers in the near future. At this moment, ChainCraft has started to construct a tenfold larger full-scale plant. This makes it possible to produce larger volumes, so that larger market segments such as the chemical industry can be served.

You will work in an ambitious, entrepreneurial and dynamic scale-up, with a lot of internal interaction and in which people challenge each other. And with many future opportunities to develop with the organization.

• Competitive remuneration, including bonus
• 8% holiday pay
• Fulltime employment of 40 hours a week
• 25 vacation days
• Stock Appreciation Rights
• Pension plan

• Bachelor’s/Master's degree in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Food Technology, Chemical, Industrial Engineering, and/or in a similar relevant field is required.
• 5+ years relevant experience in technical Product Management within the B-to-B industry of chemical compounds or materials.
• Demonstrated proficiency in analyzing financial, operational, quality, regulatory, and marketing metrics and trends.
• Experience in (digital) product marketing will be an advantage.
• Results driven
• Self-starter, enterprising, self-structuring.
• Ability to effectively interact with all levels and departments of the organization.
• Being able to maintain strong attention to details in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.
• Intrinsic motivation for ChainCraft’s mission and vision (sustainability, circularity).
• Business proficiency in English is a must, Dutch native speaker is a plus.
• Ability to regularly (minimal 50%) available on-site in Amsterdam.