Commercial Manager – Middle East

Commercial Manager – Middle East

Main Purpose of Job:

The Commercial Manager will drive Angostura’s growth across Middle Eastern markets, balancing opportunities in premium hospitality, duty-free, and travel retail channels with strict regulatory environments. The role is responsible for achieving aggressive revenue, profit, and volume targets, managing distributor and government relationships, ensuring regulatory compliance, and expanding market presence through new and untapped opportunities. This includes building strategic partnerships with key premium brands, optimizing pricing, promotions, and distribution strategies, and positioning Angostura’s brands for long-term, sustainable growth across the region. 

Key Accountabilities and Responsibilities:

Commercial Strategy & Market Growth 

• Develop and execute commercial strategies to aggressively grow market share in the Middle Eastern region. 
• Identify and secure potential new distribution partners in emerging, underdeveloped, and untapped markets. 
• Build and implement market-entry strategies for underdeveloped territories. 
• Develop strategic pricing, promotion, and distribution strategies for diverse economic conditions.  
• Drive brand building through localized trade marketing and promotional campaigns. 

Distributor & Stakeholder Management 

• Manage distributor day-to-day relationships, including negotiation of annual distribution contracts, distributor incentives, forecast management, stock management, depletions reporting, and pricing structures. 
• Conduct Quarterly Business Review Meetings with Key Markets and regular business meetings with emerging markets. 
• Work closely with distributors and business analysts to monitor in-market insights, consumer trends, and competitor activity towards adjusting commercial strategies accordingly.
• Build duty-free and travel retail channels as key growth drivers. 
• Lead pricing, rebate, and margin negotiations with local partners.  

Compliance & Risk Management 

• Ensure compliance with import, excise, advertising, and labeling laws. 
• Ensure full compliance with alcohol regulations in restricted markets.  
• Monitor market risks related to regulations, political environment, and consumer sentiment.  

Sales Performance & Financial Management 

• Accurately report on monthly sales and depletions performance and provide market intelligence to management along with in-market wins, issues, challenges, and proposed solutions. 
• Work with business analysts and financial analysts to manage quarterly order book to ensure markets submit purchase orders in a timely manner, with the goal of ensuring all orders remain on track towards meeting forecasted orders. 
• Work with distributors and internal business partners to develop revenue and volume-based budgets for the region by SKU, ensuring growth and expansion remain high priority. Whilst doing so, provide balanced volume forecasts to optimize cash flows and inventory levels. 
• Carefully monitor A&P investments and expenditure by market, ensuring budgets are managed in line with approved market plans. 

Planning, Reporting & Performance Tracking 

• Develop and continually review annual joint business and market plans with distributors, including development and review of annual volumes, marketing plans, marketing investments, and strategic partnerships. 
• Review and present regional plans bi-annually, ensuring a direct nexus between plans and strategic commercial goals. 
• Ensure performance tracking with quarterly distributor scorecards. 

Supply Chain & Quality Assurance 

• Collaborate closely with distributors, and with internal supply chain teams to forecast demand, optimize inventory allocation, and maintain stable stock supply to all markets. 
• Carefully monitor stock levels at distributor warehouses, and at Angostura’s 3PL monthly to ensure stock supply remains stable. 
• Work closely with in-house quality assurance teams to ensure products are delivered in a compliant manner in line with in-market regulations and market mandatories. 
• Coordinate with logistics teams to ensure smooth product availability. 

Brand Visibility & Premium Positioning 

• Develop premium brand visibility including but not limited to luxury hotels, restaurants, and bars. 

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Marketing, International Relations, or related discipline. 
• MBA (preferred, with specialization in International Business or Finance). 
• 8–10 years in FMCG/beverages, ideally with Middle East market experience. 
• Strong commercial track record in premium consumer goods. 
• Ability to travel to markets for prolonged periods (planned and unplanned) 
• Certification in Regulatory Compliance or International Trade Law (advantageous). 
• WSET or equivalent beverage/spirits certification (preferred for credibility in premium markets). 
• Strong experience with duty-free, retail travel, and high-margin hospitality channels. 
• Knowledge of Middle Eastern alcohol trade regulations and government compliance structures. 

Required knowledge/skills/abilities:

• Strong negotiation and account management skills. Strong commercial acumen and ability to build long-term distributor partnerships. 
• Deep knowledge of European spirits and beverages markets. 
• Analytical skills for revenue, pricing and profit margin optimization. 
• Strong Excel skills; familiarity with BI tools (e.g., Power BI) and ERP systems (e.g., SAP). 
• Excellent presentation and storytelling skills to convey insights clearly to senior stakeholders. 
• Ability to work effectively with cross-functional and cross-regional teams. 
• Proactive mindset with ability to identify issues and propose solutions. 
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and deliver high-quality outputs under tight deadlines. 
• Strong regulatory knowledge and compliance understanding in alcohol trade. 
• Excellent relationship-building skills with government authorities, distributors, and luxury hospitality players. 
• Problem-solving mindset to overcome infrastructure, supply chain or any other challenges. 
• Ability to foresee hurdles and challenges and address them directly with solution-oriented approach.  
• Ability to manage high-margin, low-volume markets. 
• Sensitivity to cultural contexts and restrictions. 
• Fluency in English; Arabic an advantage. 

Kindly submit applications 

 on or before October 03, 2025