Success Profile
Country Manager, Bushmans
About Bushmans
Bushmans is a wholly Australian operated company specialising in water tanks and storage solutions for Household, Agricultural and Commercial use. We also offer a comprehensive range of storage solutions for a wide range of Industrial applications.
Our range of rainwater tanks, fertiliser tanks and chemical storage tanks is extensive. Rainwater tanks are ideal for rainwater harvesting, farm water systems, fire water storage and many other applications. Tanks can be customised to suit you or your business’ specific needs. Through our extensive experience of over 30 years, our products are of the highest quality and have been proven in the field.
Company culture
At Bushmans, we thrive on teamwork, innovation and pride. For over three decades, our team across the country have been passionate about delivering high-quality tanks, supporting rural communities, and protecting Australia’s most precious resource – fresh water. Collaboration and care are at the heart of everything we do, making Bushmans a place where people love to work, and a brand that Australians can continue to rely on to save water, costs, and the environment. It’s this commitment to excellence, community and sustainability at Bushmans that will always put people first.
Your Opportunity
Business | Bushmans Group Pty Limited |
Reports to | Managing Director |
Total FTEs | Approximately 150 |
Location | Cavan, South Australia preferred, or another Bushmans location, with regular interstate travel to Innisfail, Dalby, Orange, Terang and Cavan |
Employment | Full-time; reasonable additional hours and travel as required by the role |
Role Scope | Full P&L and end-to-end leadership of the Bushmans national business, including sales, marketing, manufacturing, delivery and logistics, customer service and administration |
Direct Reports | Site and state leaders, commercial and marketing leadership, and other functional leaders as determined by the approved organisation structure |
Overview
The Country Manager is accountable for transforming and sustaining the performance of Bushmans as a safe, customer-focused, commercially disciplined and operationally reliable multi-site business. The role has full ownership of the Bushmans profit and loss statement and leads the five operating sites and national commercial activities.
This dynamic executive role will establish and embed a consistent operating system across the business through clear accountabilities, reliable data, disciplined performance reviews, strong site leadership, fact-based decision making and timely execution. The role must balance growth with gross margin, labour productivity, delivery performance, quality, cash flow, working capital, capital investment and workforce capability.
The Country Manager is expected to be an accountable, solutions-oriented leader who takes ownership of operational and commercial challenges. They will proactively identify underlying causes, implement effective solutions and drive outcomes through the business. Where matters require escalation, they will provide the Managing Director with clear analysis, practical options, financial impacts and a well-considered recommendation to enable timely decision-making.
Additional Context
Bushmans is seeking an accomplished and commercially astute Country Manager to lead the next stage of the company's growth journey. With strong market demand already established, the opportunity is focused on unlocking the full commercial potential of the business through operational excellence, strategic leadership and disciplined execution. This is a rare opportunity to lead a market-leading Australian manufacturer while driving profitable growth, strengthening competitive advantage and creating long-term enterprise value.
Reporting to the Managing Director, the role will lead the transition from a founder-led manufacturing business to a highly aligned, commercially disciplined and performance-driven enterprise. Success will be measured not only by operational excellence, but by the ability to improve profitability, optimise capital deployment, strengthen customer value, increase market responsiveness and deliver sustainable EBITDA growth.
This role is ideally suited to a proven manufacturing executive who combines strategic and commercial thinking with a highly visible, hands-on leadership style. The successful executive will possess a strong understanding of manufacturing operations while demonstrating the commercial judgement to balance growth, cost, investment and customer outcomes. They will understand how operational decisions influence profitability, cash flow, working capital and long-term business performance.
Equally important is the ability to think beyond operations. The Country Manager will partner closely with the Managing Director to identify opportunities for profitable growth, improve commercial performance and ensure disciplined financial management across the business. They will use data and operational insights to inform decision-making, optimise pricing and product mix where appropriate, improve return on capital employed and ensure every operational initiative delivers measurable commercial value.
Key priorities include strengthening production planning and scheduling, improving equipment reliability, reducing lead times, enhancing customer delivery performance, optimising inventory and working capital, improving forecast accuracy, implementing robust performance management systems and increasing organisational capability. Success will ultimately be measured through stronger financial performance, including revenue growth, improved margins, increased productivity, enhanced cash flow and sustainable EBITDA improvement.
To be successful, candidates will have a demonstrated track record leading manufacturing businesses, operational transformations or large-scale business improvement initiatives within complex industrial environments. They will possess strong commercial acumen, with experience interpreting financial performance, managing budgets, improving margins and translating operational improvements into tangible business outcomes. Experience across multi-site manufacturing, Lean transformation, ERP/MRP environments, supply chain-intensive operations and high-growth industrial businesses will be highly regarded.
Ultimately, Bushmans is seeking a commercially minded business leader who understands that exceptional operations are the foundation of sustainable commercial success. This is an opportunity for an executive who can integrate strategy, people, operations and financial performance to build a stronger, more scalable business and position Bushmans Tanks for its next phase of profitable growth and market leadership.
Key Accountabilities & Success Metrics
Set the standard for a safe, compliant and well-controlled business across every site and activity.
- Provide visible leadership of WHS and ensure site leaders own hazards, incidents, corrective actions and critical controls.
- Ensure compliance with applicable employment, industrial relations, environmental, product, transport, corporate and customer requirements.
- Maintain an active business risk register and escalate material risks early with an owner, mitigation plan and due date.
- Ensure incidents and non-conformances are investigated to root cause and corrective actions are sustained, not merely closed administratively.
Measures of success: WHS leading and lagging indicators; closure of corrective actions; audit and compliance outcomes; material risks controlled; no preventable surprises.
Own the financial performance of Bushmans and translate the annual plan into accountable actions by site, function and leader.
- Achieve approved revenue, gross margin, EBITDA, cash flow and working capital targets.
- Maintain an accurate rolling forecast and explain performance through clear bridges for price, volume, mix, labour, freight, overhead and one-off items.
- Control inventory exposure, slow-moving stock, purchasing commitments and discretionary expenditure.
- Review monthly results with site and functional leaders and require timely corrective actions where performance is off plan.
- Ensure commercial and operating decisions are supported by financial analysis and measurable expected returns.
Measures of success: Budget and forecast delivery; gross margin and EBITDA improvement; forecast accuracy; working capital and inventory performance; quality of corrective actions.
Lead profitable growth while protecting customer trust and avoiding sales activity that erodes margin, service or operating capacity.
- Set and execute the national sales, channel, key-account, pricing, product and marketing plans.
- Build strong relationships with major resellers, industrial customers and other strategic accounts, while ensuring relationships are institutional rather than dependent on one individual.
- Create disciplined sales pipelines, account plans, lead conversion processes and regular commercial reviews.
- Apply pricing and discount discipline, including clear authority levels and recovery of input, freight and service costs.
- Monitor competitors and market conditions and convert insights into specific actions, not general commentary.
Measures of success: Profitable revenue growth; gross margin by channel and product; key-customer retention; pipeline conversion; pricing execution; customer service and complaint trends.
Create reliable, repeatable operating performance across Innisfail, Dalby, Orange, Terang and Cavan while recognising valid local market differences.
- Set clear site plans, KPIs and accountabilities for safety, production, labour, quality, inventory, service and cost.
- Establish disciplined production planning and scheduling that aligns demand, labour, mould and machine capacity, inventory and delivery requirements.
- Standardise core processes where common methods improve safety, quality, productivity and visibility.
- Identify and remove bottlenecks, rework, waste and avoidable complexity using practical continuous-improvement methods.
- Visit sites regularly, test reported performance against conditions on the floor and coach site leaders to solve problems at source.
Measures of success: Schedule attainment; labour productivity; throughput; downtime; scrap and rework; inventory accuracy; site variance; completion of improvement actions.
Build a reliable, cost-effective delivery network that supports customers and the economics of a geographically dispersed business.
- Clarify responsibility for dispatch, scheduling, routing, carrier use and delivery performance across sites and regions.
- Improve truck and driver utilisation, freight recovery, delivery planning and visibility of cost-to-serve.
- Develop a prioritised fleet replacement and maintenance plan based on safety, service, operating cost, utilisation and return on capital.
- Evaluate make-versus-buy and central-versus-local logistics decisions using facts and total cost, not preference or history.
- Ensure major fleet and logistics requests are presented with alternatives, quantified benefits, implementation risks and recommended decisions.
Measures of success: On-time and complete delivery; freight cost and recovery; vehicle utilisation and availability; maintenance and incident performance; return on fleet investment.
Protect customer confidence by ensuring quality issues are identified quickly, supported by evidence and permanently corrected.
- Maintain clear ownership of product quality, process quality, supplier quality, customer complaints and certification requirements.
- Use data, testing and root-cause analysis to distinguish material, process, design, handling, installation and expectation issues.
- Implement containment, corrective and preventive actions with measurable verification of effectiveness.
- Coordinate product, fitting, powder, supplier and engineering changes so commercial, operational and inventory consequences are understood before implementation.
- Communicate material issues to customers and employees in a factual, timely and confidence-building manner.
Measures of success: Complaint rate and ageing; warranty and rework cost; repeat issues; supplier performance; certification status; corrective-action effectiveness.
Build a capable leadership team and a culture in which expectations are clear, performance is addressed and employees understand the direction of the business.
- Set clear roles, decision rights, goals and standards for each direct report and hold regular performance and development discussions.
- Act promptly on capability, conduct and performance gaps while recognising strong performance and developing successors.
- Maintain effective workforce plans covering headcount, skills, training, absenteeism, retention, succession and industrial relations requirements.
- Communicate business decisions, priorities and changes directly and consistently across all sites, reducing uncertainty and informal narratives.
- Create a leadership environment that is calm, candid and solutions-focused, with respectful challenge and no tolerance for blame-shifting or avoidable drama.
Measures of success: Leadership stability and bench strength; regrettable turnover; critical vacancies; performance management completion; employee understanding and engagement; succession coverage.
Make performance visible and create a management cadence that converts information into decisions and completed actions.
- Run a weekly business review covering safety, customers, sales, operations, labour, logistics, quality, cash, risks and priority actions.
- Maintain a concise dashboard, risk log and action register with accountable owners and due dates.
- Ensure KPIs are consistently defined, reported at the right frequency and reconciled to financial results.
- Require leaders to present problems with facts, root cause, options, trade-offs and a recommendation.
- Escalate early when a matter exceeds authority, carries material risk or requires group resources; otherwise, decide and execute.
Measures of success: Accuracy and timeliness of reporting; action close rate; forecast reliability; speed and quality of decisions; reduction in recurring or repeatedly escalated issues.
Develop Bushmans for sustainable performance while using the capabilities and scale of the broader group.
- Lead the annual strategy and budget process and maintain a practical three-year plan with clear priorities, owners and milestones.
- Prioritise capital projects using safety, capacity, customer, cost, cash and return-on-investment criteria.
- Prepare robust business cases for material capex and monitor benefits after approval and implementation.
- Collaborate with Finance, People and Culture, WHS/Quality, IT, Procurement, Engineering and other group businesses without transferring day-to-day ownership away from Bushmans management.
- Identify and execute appropriate group synergies in purchasing, products, manufacturing, channels, systems and talent.
Measures of success: Strategic milestones delivered; capex within budget and benefits realised; group initiatives completed; clarity and quality of investment decisions.
Essential Criteria
To be successful in this role you will possess:
- Proven executive or general management experience within a manufacturing environment, with accountability for end-to-end operational performance, profitability and business outcomes.
- Commercial and financial acumen, including a strong understanding of how operational performance impacts EBITDA, gross margin, working capital, inventory turns, cash flow and overall business profitability.
- Demonstrated success leading operational transformation programs, transitioning businesses from reactive, people-dependent operations to disciplined, process-driven and scalable manufacturing environments.
- Strong manufacturing operations expertise, including production planning, capacity planning, supply chain, inventory management, quality systems, maintenance and engineering functions.
- Extensive experience implementing Lean manufacturing and continuous Improvement methodologies, with a proven ability to embed sustainable cultural change rather than simply deploy improvement tools.
- Track record of establishing operational management systems, including Daily Management Systems, Leader Standard Work, tiered accountability processes, KPI frameworks and visual management practices.
- Highly developed systems thinking capability, with the ability to identify operational constraints, analyse root causes and implement long-term solutions that improve throughput, reliability and performance.
- Strong leadership and coaching capability, with demonstrated success developing operational leaders, building accountability and creating high-performing leadership teams.
- Hands-on, visible leadership style, with a willingness to spend significant time in operations, engaging with frontline teams, removing barriers and driving execution excellence.
- Proven experience within medium to large-scale manufacturing businesses, ideally including multi-site operations, operational turnarounds, ERP/MRP environments and supply chain-intensive businesses.
Ideal Industry Background
Experience gained within industrial manufacturing, building products, plastics, rotational moulding, engineering, heavy manufacturing or process manufacturing environments will be highly regarded.
Ready to Apply?
Please send your CV and covering letter quoting Ref No A006480 to Watermark Search International at search@watermarksearch.com.au. We will reply to the email address used for your application.
Contact Information
If you require further information about the opportunities or the application process, please contact:
Will Wilson, Partner, Watermark
Mobile: 0499 920 848
Email: will.wilson@watermarksearch.com.au
Alison Myatt, Head of Research, Watermark
Mobile: 0412 630 817
Email: alison.myatt@watermarksearch.com.au