Business Planning Manager (12-month FTC)

Who are we?

Argent Energy operate in the UK and Netherlands and are a leading European waste-based biodiesel producer with a vision to help decarbonise transport worldwide. We have ambitious plans to grow the business and enter new markets.

Main purpose of the role

The Business Planning Manager is accountable for:

• In charge of driving the full optimisation of the long term strategic planning (18 months rolling forecast) based on business requirements and assets development
• Optimizing plant output and ensure all risks mitigations are in place based on strong financial analysis
• Leading and embedding the end-to-end Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) process across the Group, ensuring customer demand is met through alignment of commercial requirements, operational capacity, inventory strategy and financial objectives.
• The governance, preparation, coordination and facilitation of the S&OP cycle, ensuring robust cross-functional decision making between Sustainability, Commercial, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance and Logistics, and providing clear visibility of risks, constraints, trade-offs and required actions.
• Data integrity, reporting accuracy and scenario modelling that underpin S&OP decisions, enabling timely escalation and executive decision making.

This is a 12-month fixed-term contract.

Your main responsibilities will be:

• Lead, coach and develop the Planning team to deliver consistent high performance across sites.
• Own the group planning framework and cadence, ensuring demand, supply, inventory and production plans are aligned to customer requirements, capacity and financial targets.
• Ensure any decision are based on financial numbers
• Ensure the quality, integrity and governance of planning master data and reporting, enabling accurate visibility, performance management and decision support.
• Facilitate cross-functional S&OP discussions and decision making, ensuring risks, constraints and options are clearly articulated and appropriately escalated.
• Build effective interfaces with Commercial, Operations, Trading, Sustainability, Procurement to anticipate changes (e.g., feedstock, customer demand, NPD/NPI) and ensure smooth planning transitions.
• Define and embed inventory policy (e.g., safety stock, min/max parameters) and monitor adherence to support service, working capital and operational stability.
• Drive continuous improvement, standard operating procedures and performance reporting (KPIs/visual management) to improve service, reliability and efficiency.
• Drive standardised planning ways of working across sites, continuous improvement and digitalisation (including effective use of Oracle/ERP), and support strategic change initiatives through to implementation.
• Own planning-system ways of working, including ongoing development of Oracle/ERP and related digital tools to improve planning effectiveness.
• Drive/Assess strategic impact of our sustainability route

Your key relationships will be:

Internal

• Commercial / Trade teams (demand signals, customer commitments, market changes)
• Operations / Manufacturing & site planning teams (capacity, constraints, execution readiness)
• Supply Chain / Logistics (inventory strategy, inbound/outbound constraints, service)
• Sustainability department (compliance requirements to be embedded in planning processes and decisions)
• Finance (alignment to financial objectives, working capital, performance reporting)
• IT / ERP support (Oracle/ERP process adoption, data governance and improvements)

External

• Key customers (service commitments, demand changes, delivery expectations)
• Key suppliers / service providers (where relevant to planning constraints and lead times)