Managing Director, Philippines

Managing Director, Philippines

Verta Bioenergy Metro Manila, Philippines (on-site, with regular presence at plant and project sites in Luzon) Full time | Travel up to 40%, mostly domestic, some regional APAC Reports to: Group CEO and the Board

About the job

Verta makes engineered biomass pellets that drop into existing industrial coal boilers with no capital retrofit on the customer side. Feedstock is agricultural and agro-industrial residue that currently goes to waste.

We are venture backed by regional and international climate funds. We are past technology validation and selling commercially from an operating plant in Luzon. Alongside the fuel we run a proprietary combustion intelligence layer that tunes co-firing performance inside the customer's boiler, and a carbon credit pathway on the displaced coal.

The next phase is not proving the product. It is building plants.

The mandate

1. Capital formation (roughly 55 to 65% of the role)

• Own the equity round end to end: pipeline, dataroom, diligence, terms, close
• Structure and raise project-level capital at SPV level: senior debt, mezzanine, green and blended finance, DFI facilities, leasing
• Build the lender and investor bench across the Philippines and wider APAC: DFIs, climate funds, family offices, local banks, government-linked capital
• Negotiate and sign. Not support the process, not co-pilot it

2. Greenfield project development (roughly 25 to 35%)

• Take new pelleting plants from site selection through permitting, EPC selection, construction, commissioning and ramp
• Own the permitting path: LGU, DENR and ECC, BOI incentives, land tenure, power supply or grid connection
• Lock feedstock before steel goes up: aggregation agreements with millers, farms and agro-processors inside the catchment radius
• Be on site during build. Contractor performance, supply chain and commissioning problems get solved in person, not on a call

3. Commercial and platform scaling

• Convert the offtake pipeline into indexed, multi-year contracts a lender will actually underwrite
• Build the repeatable playbook: standard site model, standard SPV structure, standard EPC scope, standard offtake template
• Hire, grow and hold the Philippine team through a period where the work will outrun the headcount
  

Requirements

1. You have personally taken a greenfield industrial or energy asset from development to commissioning. Site through permits through EPC through construction through commissioning through ramp. Hands on. If your involvement was oversight of a team that did it, this is not your role.

2. You have personally closed capital. Equity, project debt, or both. Originated it, negotiated it, signed it. Building the model and the deck for someone else to close does not count.

3. You have done both of the above inside the same business. The combination is the rare part. People who can raise but cannot build, or build but cannot raise, will not work in this seat.

4. You have carried a P&L with real operational weight behind it. Plant, business unit or country. Throughput, uptime, safety, cost per tonne. You know what a bad month on the floor feels like and what it does to the numbers.

5. You know how the Philippines actually works. LGUs, DENR, BOI, land, logistics, and who to call. A network you can use next week, not one you would need to build first.

6. You are comfortable being under-resourced. Systems are half built. Capital is not guaranteed. You will regularly do work several levels below your title, including on site in the dust.

Useful, not required

• Biomass, waste-to-energy, cement, agri-processing or heavy industrial background
• Carbon markets experience: Article 6, Gold Standard, Verra
• Existing relationships with Philippine industrial energy buyers or their boiler operators
• Prior founder or early-stage operating experience
• Comfort with technical combustion and fuel specification conversations

Not a fit if

• Your delivery experience is portfolio, oversight or advisory rather than build
• Your fundraising experience is preparing materials for someone else to close
• You have only operated inside mature utilities, large IPP platforms or fully institutionalised infrastructure businesses
• You want a defined role, a defined team and a defined budget on day one