Zoe Williams

Langmead Herbs is a UK grower and supplier of fresh and cut herbs to major national retailers and foodservice customers, operating within a high-volume, short-shelf-life supply chain environment, with annual turnover of c.£30m.

As Head of Commercial Finance, I lead the commercial finance function with full responsibility for budgeting, forecasting, performance reporting, and commercial insight across the business. I recruited, developed, and now lead a high-performing finance team, significantly improving the quality, consistency, and commercial relevance of financial support provided to senior stakeholders.

• Chairing weekly senior management meetings, using financial insight to drive alignment across functions and focus discussion on performance, risk, and opportunity.
• Leading and building a team of two accountants who create tenders, weekly P&L reporting and month end reporting.
• I regularly present clear, actionable recommendations directly to directors, influencing pricing strategy, cost control initiatives, and resource allocation decisions.

Notable Achievements:

• Creating the tender that won new business with Asda after three years of relationship building.
• Successfully managing a team through a turbulent time and then receiving glowing feedback from the team.

In this role, I acted as a trusted commercial advisor to senior stakeholders, supporting strategic planning through robust financial insight and constructive challenge. I led regular reviews of performance against budget, identifying variances early and working collaboratively with commercial and operational teams to address underlying drivers.

I partnered closely with the sales function to develop profitable pricing strategies, ensuring commercial decisions were underpinned by clear margin analysis and forward-looking forecasts. By tailoring complex financial information for a range of audiences, I improved financial understanding and engagement across the business.

Notable achievements

• Creating a complex factory capacity plan that aided requests for capital expenditure to the board for expansion.
• Created and advised on a tender that won business with Tesco at a value of £2m+.

• Proposed cost-cutting and profit-generating alternatives to increase revenues and profits.
• Determined and investigated variance between standard costs and actual.
• Automated operational workflow by implementing new processing platform.

Natures Way Foods is a leading UK prepared foods manufacturer supplying major supermarket and foodservice customers, operating complex manufacturing and distribution networks with annual turnover of c.£250m.

As Finance Business Partner to the Supply Chain function, I held ownership of budgeting, forecasting, and performance reporting across multiple Heads of Department, with direct responsibility for a £10m+ transport budget and a £100m+ produce budget.

I partnered closely with Procurement, Distribution, and Operations, working directly with multi-million-pound revenue suppliers to support commercial negotiations and cost management. I built supply and demand forecasts using customer data received from major clients including Tesco and McDonald’s, translating volume forecasts into financially robust supply plans that supported availability, cost control, and margin protection.

During a period of significant inflationary pressure across produce and logistics, I delivered targeted cost analysis and scenario modelling to inform supplier discussions, pricing strategy, and operational decision-making, helping the business respond quickly to market volatility.

• Partnering to the Manufacturing Managers and site management across dedicated categories/factories, in addition to supporting the Commercial Finance Business Partners with product costings and the Supply Finance Business Partner with budgeting, forecasting, scenario analysis and ad hoc tasks.
• Delivering accurate product costings, robust budgeting and forecasting driving a continuous improvement culture throughout all processes.
• Holding key stakeholders to account for their performance vs standards / targets and pro-actively communicate future forecast risks to the business in a timely manner.