Global Head of Flexibles Category

The Procurement team is made of 120 professionals working across the world to create competitive advantage for pladis through mid-term sourcing strategies and strong supplier relationships. Our 2025 Procurement vision aims at delivering more value for the business along 5 key business deliverables: Supply Continuity, Cost Out, Cash Flow optimization, Sustainability and Supplier Innovation.

We work as a matrix organization, with Global Categories leveraging the pladis global size and Local Procurement ensuring a strong connection and proximity with our 6 regions (UK & Ireland, Western Europe & Emerging markets, Middle East – North Africa – India, Turkey – Eastern Europe – Central Asia, APAC and North America).

Within Global Categories, the Head of Category Flexibles reports directly to the Packaging Categories Lead, who in turn reports into the CPO. (S)He drives (in alignment with Regional Procurement teams) the FLEXIBLES Category (90 M£ spend).

The key responsibilities include:

• Designing, formalizing & implementing a 2 to 3 years forward category strategy, after ensuring full alignment with the business strategies
• Building strong relationships across all pladis functions (R&D, Operations, Engineering, Finance, Marketing), influencing pladis strategy in relation with Flexibles (competitivity, innovation, sustainability) and working with all key stakeholders to accelerate project implementation
• Implementing all Procurement-driven processes & tools within his/her categories
• Driving Procurement teams in regions to ensure a smooth and efficient implementation of global sourcing strategies, while promoting the sharing of best practices and leading benchmarks across regions
• Delivering top class results across all 5 strategic dimensions of our mission:
• A 3-year productivity roadmap to achieve sustainable savings of a minimum of 3.5% per year, through reformulation of our materials or negotiation with our suppliers
• A clear sustainability roadmap (jointly with R&D) to reach the goals set by pladis, while creating differentiation in the market
• A clear innovation roadmap (jointly with R&D) to create extra value for consumers across our strategic innovation platforms
• A robust supply continuity plan to assess, anticipate and prevent any disruption to our supply chain
• A strong target to improve cash flow across our operations (payables, stocks of finished goods…).

More specifically with regards to the Flexibles Category, (s)he will be responsible to:

• Define jointly with Procurement in the Regions a Sourcing Strategy (productivity roadmap, innovation roadmap, sustainability roadmap, supplier strategy)
• Map together with Regional Procurement our requirements for the next 3 years, in order to anticipate our needs as the market evolves. This includes looking at innovative packaging which matches our long-term sustainability roadmap (needs analysis)
• Map the market to identify new suppliers in those strategic areas, able to challenge our incumbent suppliers (market analysis)
• Define our Commodities cover strategy, jointly with the Procurement Head for Financial Hedging when done through financial instruments. Link with Procurement teams in Regions to ensure timely execution of our cover strategy when done through physical contracts.
• Build a strong cost-modelling program with key suppliers to ensure prices are directly linked to specifications design and commodity covers or indices (raw material indices, energy).
• Share benchmarks and best practices across all regions
• Build strong SRM (Supplier Relationship Management) with global & strategic suppliers, to build long-term relationship in order to leverage our size whenever it makes sense and get priority access to their sustainability / innovation programs. This includes setting up & monitoring a robust supplier evaluation program.
• Negotiate agreements on behalf in all regions and align supplier selection with Procurement in the Regions
• Finalize contracts with global suppliers, collecting all necessary requirements (technical, service level, expected KPIs) from the various stakeholders. Support Procurement teams in the Regions with the contract execution when significant breaches of service / quality are identified
• Identify improvement opportunities, develop should-cost models, set up continuous improvement targets to drive savings & value
• Lead AOP (budgeting process) for commodity assumptions, and key cost-model assumptions (labour, energy, chemicals, etc).