Category Manager North EMEA

DS Smith is now hiring a Category Manager for the North EMEA region.

About The Role
An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the newly formed North EMEA Marketing team at DS Smith as a Category Manager. In this important role, you will be responsible for understanding and developing our business within specific market segments across North EMEA (Baltics & Nordics).

As a strong partner to the sales team, you will provide deep insights into market segments, enabling them to form strategic partnerships with customers based on your comprehensive knowledge of growth opportunities. Additionally, you will be instrumental in driving the innovation agenda, anchored in segment and customer insights.

Your principal responsibilities will include developing and driving initiatives that significantly impact sales, margin performance, and pricing across DS Smith's business segments. You will put in place action plans to reach predefined budget goals while conducting in-depth analyses of market segments from both internal and external sources. Understanding shopper and retail trends, as well as the role of packaging within each segment's supply cycle, you will translate these insights into actionable strategies.

Furthermore, you will conduct competitor reviews and assess our existing product offerings within each segment, highlighting potential gaps, improvements, and innovation opportunities resulting from your insight work. Partnering with sales teams, you will establish our role as packaging strategists for customers, driving top and bottom-line growth by continuously reassessing our portfolio (including innovation) based on ever-changing trends and insights in specific market segments.

Additionally, you will develop target lists of new prospect customers and support sales teams in preparing and participating in pitch presentations. Collaborating with the Marketing department, you will define and deploy communication strategies across different markets through local communication managers. You will also serve as an ongoing point of contact for sales teams across the region, providing support on customer meetings and insights related to your respective category.

If you are passionate about driving packaging innovation and growth through deep market insights and strategic partnerships, we want to hear from you

This role reports to Marketing Manager North EMEA, and can be based at either of our North EMEA offices.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years Marketing/ Category Management/ Brand Management within FMCG companies – ideally 5-10 years
• Sales experience greatly appreciated
• Passionate about growing businesses in partnership with our customers
• Interest in consumer / shopper behaviour, retailing, FMCG supply chains and the fast-changing sales channels
• Strong communication and presentation skills – internal and external

This role requires excellent language skills, oral and written, in English as well as one of the Baltic or Nordic languages.

Fair recruitment in DS Smith
Don't meet every single requirement? At DS Smith, we are proud to recruit across a wide range of candidates. We are thriving for being a diverse workplace where everyone can realize their potential. We see equality and diversity as a strength. Thus, we hope that you will apply for the position even if you do not necessarily meet all the requirements.

About Us
DS Smith is part of International Paper and consists of approximately 70,000 employees worldwide. Our offering consists of developing corrugated packaging solutions, both customized and standard sizes. In addition, we provide a range of complementary packaging, e.g. void-fill materials, edge protection and sealing, in order to provide customized and climate-smart solutions as needed.

DS Smith focuses on realizing the potential of our employees every day, and you will have nearly endless opportunities for independent prioritization of your daily work in a good work environment with colleagues of all ages and nationalities. Like all DS Smith colleagues, we are proud of the opportunity to make a sustainable difference in a market-leading company.

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Further information
This is a permanent position with placement at one of our North EMEA offices, with occasional travels to other North EMEA sites.

If you have any questions about the position, please contact our Marketing Manager North EMEA,

Contact our recruitment team at for questions regarding the process and your application. Please note that we do not accept applications via email. We use digital screening questions and work psychological tests as selection tools for fair and unbiased recruitment.

Last day of application is November 5th, and interviews are expected to be held shortly thereafter. Start date according to agreement.

Please apply with your CV in English.

Warmly welcome with your application