Sales Manager - Coatings

ABOUT THE ROLE

Mantrose Group is a specialty ingredients company with deep application expertise across confectionery, food, and pharmaceutical coatings. Our portfolio spans resinous and wax-based confectionery coatings, pharmaceutical excipients, and our NatureSeal line of post-harvest wash and coating solutions for fresh-cut produce. NatureSeal is a market-leading technology used by produce processors and retailers across North America to extend the shelf-life, appearance, and safety of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables.

We are looking for a technically credible Sales Manager to develop and grow a commercial territory spanning confectionery, food coatings, pharma/nutraceutical, and fresh produce markets. This is a full-cycle individual contributor role: you will identify opportunities, build technical relationships, run application trials, and close business. The NatureSeal segment in particular offers significant growth potential, with active demand from produce processors and foodservice distributors. The right candidate brings enough chemistry or food science background to hold a substantive conversation in a customer lab, and enough commercial instinct to convert that credibility into sales.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Business Development & Pipeline Management

• Prospect, qualify, and develop new accounts across confectionery, food, pharma/nutraceutical, and fresh-cut produce segments.

• Build and maintain a structured opportunity pipeline in CRM, tracking account status, project progression, and next steps with discipline.

• Develop and execute account business plans on monthly and annual cadences, setting growth targets and tracking performance against them.

• Represent Mantrose Group at industry tradeshows (NCA, SupplySide, United Fresh, and others), leveraging these events for prospecting and relationship deepening.

Technical Selling & Customer Engagement

• Serve as the primary commercial interface for your accounts, conducting product demonstrations, application discussions, and customized technical presentations.

• Partner with R&D and product management to match Mantrose capabilities to customer formulation challenges, from confectionery and pharmaceutical coatings to NatureSeal post-harvest treatment programs for fresh-cut produce processors.

• Develop NatureSeal opportunities across produce processors and foodservice distributors, educating buyers and technical staff on shelf-life extension, browning inhibition, and food safety benefits.

• Translate customer requirements into internal project briefs, ensuring cross-functional teams have the context needed to develop targeted solutions.

Market Intelligence & Strategy

• Continuously gather competitive intelligence on pricing, product performance, applications, and market trends across your covered segments.

• Analyze customer and market data to surface patterns, inform pricing decisions, and identify white space for product development.

• Contribute to commercial strategy discussions by sharing field perspective on competitor activity, regulatory developments, and customer priorities.

Professional Development

• Maintain current technical knowledge across covered application areas through industry publications, educational workshops, and participation in relevant professional societies.

• Build and sustain a professional network that supports long-term business development across all covered market segments.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Food Science or a closely related technical discipline.

• 5+ years of technical sales or business development experience in food ingredients, specialty chemicals, or a directly adjacent field.

• Demonstrated ability to sell on technical value: capable of diagnosing a customer application problem, proposing a solution, and supporting trials through to commercialization.

• Working knowledge of the functional food ingredient space, with familiarity across at least one of the following: confections, pharma coatings, fresh produce, or nutraceuticals.

• Strong written, verbal, and presentation skills; comfortable presenting to both technical and procuremen