Senior Cost Accountant - Stellenbosch at Lactalis South Africa

Job Description    

• Join Lactalis SA and take on the challenge as a Senior Cost Accountant. You will be responsible for providing financial support to the business, within the specific function (Industrial), through the relevant analysis of information using insight and judgement. The end result is to drive the business objectives while supporting improved quality decision making.

Required Skills    

• BCom Management Accounting Honours / CIMA
• Minimum 5 years’ experience preferably dairy or FMCG
• Previous costing experience would be advantageous
• Demonstrates a strong sense of urgency to get things done and is driven in his/her work.
• Collaborate cross functionally to deliver better results.
• Ability to translate departmental goals and targets into practical daily outputs
• Seeks to continuously improve quality and efficiency on execution and takes initiative about suggesting and implementing opportunities for improvement.
• Takes responsibility and shows willingness to be accountable for his/her actions.
• Can positively adapt to changes within the Company, that are introduced to meet our performance targets.
• Can participate when the team makes  a decision and then practically implement it – in other words he/she is able to “discuss, decide and do”.

Duties & Responsibilities    

Profit & Loss calculations / Costings:

• Profit and Loss calculations for Lactalis South Africa.
• Working cross functional in determining costing of new and existing products.
• Comparing international prices for Cheddar, Butter and SMP with local prices.

Industrial / Milk Collection / Rest of Africa:

• Support, training and development of Plant Financial Managers and Production Accountants in South Africa. 
• Site visits to support the local finance staff.
• Support the Milk Collection department as part of industrial / milk collection environment.
• Support to the Africa Australe countries (Zambia, Botswana, Eswatini and Mozambique) to ensure the bill of material are accurate.
• Assistance with drafting of the annual budget process to ensure accurate pricing is uploaded.      
• Accuracy of the Industrial Budget - ensure PCI is calculated accurately within the different levels from bulk, intermediate, final product with overhead cost allocation.       

Bill of Materials:

• Ensure the BOM that is set-up on the system is aligned to the activity in the operation.
• Support the project on simplifying the workshops and cost allocations.
• Ensure the overhead cost in the budget is aligned to the activity in the plant.
• Split per plant the overhead costs split between fixed and variable component.

Stock Valuation:

• Review the stock valuation on a quarterly basis based on annual average cost to ensure PCI movement at beginning of the year is aligned with year-end stock valuation.

 People Management:

• Support the succession planning process.
• Support with expertise and assist in the operational activities at Plants South Africa and Africa Australe. 
• Cross functional training of Management Accountant on costing, BPCS and other requests from the departments.
• Support to the Africa Australe countries co i.e. Country Controller and Head Office Reporting team.