Assistant Procurement Manager - Tea Blending & Buying at Unilever

Ref No: R-18061
Location: Agbara, Nigeria

About The Tea Business

• Unilever is proud of its Tea business, the biggest in the world, with world class purpose driven brands such as Lipton, PG tips and Pukka. Recently, Unilever decided to separate the Tea business to ensure it can best achieve its potential. Unilever is currently reviewing several options for separation, including a demerger, an initial public offering, a disposal or through partnership models. The Tea businesses in India and Indonesia, and the partnership interests in the ready-to-drink Tea joint ventures will be retained.
• The balance of the Tea brands and geographies and all Tea estates, with generated revenues of €2 billion in 2019, is growing and profitable with proven potential both pre- and post-COVID-19. As a standalone entity, the Tea company remains number one in the world and is even better positioned to lead the industry and take full advantage of the opportunities in the category, with more focus and entrepreneurship driving greater growth and value.
• The current vision for the Tea company is to champion a tastier, healthier, more sustainable world of plant-based drinking. Purposeful thinking will be the core anchor of the business, its brands as well as its culture, and enables simple and agile decision making, supports an entrepreneurial mindset and is driven by passion for our consumers.
• As we move through this journey towards separation, we are seeking employees with a passion for exciting entrepreneurial experiences, who want to pursue unique career opportunities and have a desire to be an integral part in building the bright future of this plant-based company.

Your Role

• Working with their respective cluster Procurement Manager Tea, they will monitor stocks to ensure all stocks are tracked till consumption.  They will adhere to blend cost targets and forecast provided to the business.
• Responsible for issuing blend sheets to Nigeria Mixing Unit as per plan.
• Responsible for incoming quality evaluation and its use.
• Ensure all inbound tea deliveries are tasted and fully updated in SAP
• Responsible for delivery of quality of all Blends as per the PBBS.
• To be responsible for weekly update and approval of demand plans
• Own and ensure all static data for Tea specific SAP and ICRON systems is updated on time and in full.
• Roll-out global sourcing strategies locally
• Work closely with 3PL partners, Logistics Operations, and other Supply chain functional stakeholders.
• Build market intelligence to understand inflation development and potential new service providers/technologies that could help extra capacity creation in the business.
• Business partnering with Supply chain team in the markets to deliver projects to achieve cost and service level targets and Support benchmark activities
• Support preparing negotiation strategy and manage negotiations jointly with the SC team
• Deliver on key financial targets such as gross margin improvement through savings and cash flow improvement by applying for example smart buying tools
• Owning procurement fundamentals for spend responsibility areas i.e. master data, stakeholder management, savings, KPI reporting, contracts, creating playbooks, implementation of digital solutions and technology enablers etc.
• Annual Business Plan Development Partnering with Finance & Global Teams.
• Implement & optimize projects in cooperation with SC teams such as Logistics procurement digitalization agenda.
• Key point of contact for cross functional teams such as legal, Finance, CD etc. as projects require for resolving all Logistics Procurement business issues with supply chain inputs/impacts
• Ensure a safety culture for all supply chain people

Key Responsibilities

• Executing actions for Integrating global / regional sourcing strategies with business and portfolio demands, ensuring timely inputs to global/regional project development and OTIF execution of global/regional strategy and projects in the clusters
• Support Global Innovation & Sustainability programs for Leaf Tea
• Work with the Markets to analyse and collate information regarding current requirements and future needs. Efficient, timely and transparent communication to internal customers and suppliers
• Work within and always ensure compliance to defined Procurement procedures and adhere to the Code of Business Principles.
• Work in an effective, cohesive team environment (Ability to understand all areas of Procurement)
• Supplier Relationship Management and negotiate value driven agreements that are in line with defined commercial and legal requirements and subsequently manage the supplier relationships/SLA’s along with key stakeholders

Procurement Strategies:

• Implement actions for executing global strategies for and with the markets. Support the procurement organization to meet goals and objectives in support to the overall Tea Business strategy, specifically focusing on Sustainability
• Work with Cross Functional team to implementing sourcing strategy and strategic contracts are in place for the portfolios.
• Implementation of Strategic sourcing agreements at assigned site cluster level within the portfolio
• Work with R&D teams to deliver all future innovations
• Support Procurement & Other Cross Functional leads by providing timely and accurately assistance on relevant topics and initiatives as required.

Supplier management:

• Build and develop key Strategic & Local supplier relationships, focus on value, innovation, sustainability and growth roadmaps including bespoke transformational global initiatives such as dedicated supplier hubs
• Maintain frequent engagement with strategic, global & Local suppliers and key Unilever stakeholders, to review/resolve relationship issues and develop future business opportunities (inline with relevant PTW/JBDP programs)
• Lead negotiations on contract, innovation & operating issues with suppliers
• Work with the Legal teams to finalise global commercial agreements using contractual operating framework of UPAs/STCs etc
• Work with key internal stakeholders in the markets and at a global category teams to initiate actions for executing strategy
• Work with R&D to develop optimised and harmonised specifications within a framework of functional specifications in line with the business requirements and set category strategies
• Drive Sustainability initiatives and actions within the portfolio

Savings:

• Proactively identify and deliver Savings and/or Cash in line with set targets. Identify and propose cost reduction/continuous performance improvement (supplier) opportunities.
• Identify, implement and record Value Improvement Programs (VIP) together with the market teams – lead global deployment of opportunities and support market execution
• Manage and coordinate global savings delivery inline with global and market targets, supporting markets to meet Savings Targets.

Requirements
Required Experience:

• Bachelor's Degree required; Concentration in Business, Procurement or Supply Chain preferred
• 3+ years’ experience in procurement or supply chain
• Experience in supply and portfolio strategy development
• Experience in working in a virtual team and regional/global scope
• Experience in leading a team and people management
• Experience in change management projects

Who We Are Looking For:

• Self-starter & independent operator
• Bias for action and strong executor
• Strong in holding people accountable
• Framing
• Change management

Preferred Experience
Tea Taster & Blending experience with below requirements:

• Is able to assess and evaluate in detail tea samples at differing brew strengths eg consumer strength, technical strength
• Is able to apply and adapt best practice eg Tealingo rules.
• Classifies tea samples into Tealingo items as a matter of course

Tea Blending Skills with below Requirements:

• Evaluates the new blend per Good Tasting Practice to pass/fail vs a blend specification or standard
• Evaluates blends on both physical, visual and sensory parameters
• Can construct a blend in a live system in accordance with a prescribed recipe and/or specification
• Can make the necessary changes to a blend if it has not passed the evaluation to ensure it meets the specification.

Travel required:

• 10% or limited travel. Now limited due to CV19 restrictions