Solutions/Executive search/Product registration
Agrochemicals
Product registration
A company entering a new market needed a registration lead who could file crop-protection products with the local authority — not a generalist commercial hire.
Project background
The client intended to sell crop-protection products in one Southeast Asian market. Local rules: no sale until trial data, label language, and the registration file are accepted by the authority.
Headquarters first planned to fold registration into the commercial lead, on the view that distributor relationships would move the filing. Local counsel was that trials, supplementary files, and hearings need someone whose job is the path. When commercial owns it, the calendar slips.
The search ran in the country of the role. The brief was not another salesperson. It was a person who could drive the registration path without waiting for a regional visit.
Profile
- Local registration experience in agrochemicals, pesticides, or a close analogue — able to explain the filing steps and the usual supplementary requests.
- Can work with the authority, trial stations, and local counsel, not only draft internally.
- Can report progress and risk to headquarters in English, without a salesperson as interpreter.
- Distributor development is not the main CV. Commercial people with no registration file were kept off the first list.
Search timeline
First gate
5 business days
Second gate
About seven weeks to offer
After the briefing, the first list went out on business day five. Client interviews and the background check followed. The offer went in about week seven. A registration hire sits below country-GM sign-off, so the cycle is shorter than a general-manager search.
CVs presented
Presented
6
Landed
3
Six CVs on the first list, each with a written interview report. The client met three. One could walk the registration path and would take a country-organisation seat rather than a regional side job.
What we took from it
The hire was a local registration manager. The commercial lead no longer owned the technical file. Filing dates moved against the authority’s calendar, not the sales forecast.
Headquarters then timed first shipments to registration gates. The combined commercial-and-registration job was dropped because a trial window is not a distributor meeting.
For the next brief of this type: split registration from commercial at the kickoff. Keep the first list to people who have actually run a file.