Sr. Buyer, Strategic Sourcing

Florida Crystals Corporation is a fully integrated cane sugar company. Florida Crystals regeneratively farms sugarcane and rice in South Florida, where it owns two sugar mills, a sugar refinery, a packaging and distribution center, Florida's only rice mill, a compost facility, and one of the largest renewable power plants of its kind in the U.S., which uses sugarcane fiber to generate eco-friendly energy that powers its sugar operations. Florida Crystals owns one of the largest Regenerative Organic Certified® farms in the U.S. and its Florida Crystals® products are the only ROC™ sugar grown and milled sugar in the country. Florida Crystals owns ASR Group International, Inc., a holding company that conducts operations through its subsidiaries. The ASR Group® family of companies make up the world’s largest refiner and marketer of cane sugar.

About the role

The Sr Strategic Sourcing Buyer is responsible for being the strategic sourcing and subject matter expert for assigned categories of direct materials, packaging materials, ingredients, and/or process chemicals. This role identifies new sources of supply to be leveraged and optimized by the business, makes sound business decisions with minimal direction, and has a full understanding of market trends, market analysis, and supplier negotiations. The role operates in a collaborative team environment and maintains positive business relationships with both internal and external customers. Understanding of financial markets that influence commodity or category prices and risk is essential. This position may have direct reports.

Responsibilities

• Conduct strategic sourcing events, category purchasing management, and day-to-day buying of direct materials or packaging, ingredients, and/or process chemicals for the facility and manufacturing process.
• Develop and own the category strategy, including a full understanding of supply, demand, capacity, market outlook, risks, benchmarking, budget, and competitive landscape.
• Develop and present market-competitive category management strategies covering assigned commodity or category groups.
• Provide and own current marketplace trends in price, suppliers, and/or other conditions affecting business in assigned categories, with the ability to analyze supply and demand factors.
• Forecast and model categories with an 18-month outlook.
• Direct negotiation of cost reductions based on cost modeling, product and supplier benchmarking, category market analysis, and extended global or regional agreements; provide market intelligence.
• Independently negotiate contracts, price, and supplier agreements.
• Evaluate, qualify, and select suppliers based on quality, service, cost, and capability to support overall company product manufacturing processes and total cost of ownership, including working capital optimization.
• Develop category budget targeting to achieve optimal Purchase Price Variance (PPV) results; responsible for annual budget for assigned categories and presentations.
• Deliver on cost savings and process improvement initiatives.
• Contribute to the Procurement team’s performance against departmental and internal customer KPIs.
• Execute all purchasing standard operating procedures to secure materials and services to meet business needs.
• Build and maintain collaborative relationships between the procurement team and its internal customers.
• Develop strategic analysis of assigned categories.
• Process a high volume of requisitions from multiple sites under assigned categories.
• Consolidate, analyze, and report on ERP and marketplace information.
• Ensure all agreements, purchases, and initiatives comply with established department policies and procedures.
• Ensure suppliers comply with established company credentials for specified categories.
• Maintain and follow all Metrics and KPIs.
• Complete special projects and other duties as assigned.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited university required; degree major in Supply Chain, Business, or related field preferred.
• 5+ years of applicable purchasing experience required.
• Experience buying direct materials or packaging, ingredients, and/or process chemicals.
• 5+ years of experience utilizing an ERP system (Buying, Researching, Reporting & Analysis, etc.).
• Strong analytical and numeracy skills, combined with advanced Excel and IT skills; SAP experience strongly preferred.
• Knowledge of purchasing practices and legislation, especially within the Food & Beverage industry.
• Strong negotiation and influencing skills, both direct and indirect.
• Commercially and contract astute.
• Results-driven, with a positive attitude, high level of energy, passion, and enthusiasm.
• High level of emotional intelligence and strong interpersonal skills.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Strategic thinking, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities.
• Attention to detail with cause-and-effect analysis.
• Ability to understand internal demands as they relate to purchases of goods and services.
• Ability to communicate clearly and concisely both verbally and in writing.
• Ability to analyze complex information and perform root cause analysis.
• Recognize areas for Continuous Improvement strategies; recommend and implement CI strategies as assigned.
• Provide excellent customer service to both internal and external customers and foster strong, open lines of communication across all levels of the organization.
• Maintain confidentiality of proprietary business information.
• Effectively manage time, including the ability to prioritize, work within assigned deadlines, and work independently or collaboratively to accomplish organizational objectives.
• Manage multiple tasks and projects while maintaining quality and accuracy standards.
• Utilize Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) at an advanced level.

Skills

• Operations Management (Intermediate)
• Analytical Thinking (Advanced)
• Supply Chain Management (Advanced)
• Supplier Relationship Management (Advanced)
• Inventory Management (Advanced)
• Continuous Improvement (Intermediate)
• Category Management (Intermediate)
• Enterprise Resources Planning (Intermediate)
• Supplier Negotiations (Advanced)
• Material Resource Planning (Advanced)
• Contracts (Advanced)
• Business Strategy and Financial Acumen (Intermediate)
• Analysis and Reporting (Advanced)

Schedule

Hybrid work schedule: in-office 3 days per week, remote 2 days per week. Hybrid work schedules are subject to change.

Location

West Palm Beach, FL

Travel up to 10% of the time; travel will be assigned based on the current needs of the business.