Senior Buyer, Corporate Purchasing - Packaging, North America

TITLE: Senior Buyer, Corporate Purchasing - Packaging, North America

REPORTING TO: Senior Manager, Corporate Purchasing - Packaging

LOCATION: Chicago, IL or Buffalo, NY

Lactalis Heritage Dairy is currently seeking candidates to join our team in Chicago, IL or Buffalo, NY.

Lactalis Group, the world leader in dairy, is a family-owned business with more than 85,000 pragmatic and ambitious professionals worldwide, committed to providing healthy and delicious dairy products that bring people together every day. At Lactalis, our core values of AMBITION, ENGAGEMENT, and SIMPLICITY are at the heart of everything we do.

If you're looking for a unique experience with a company that offers strong brands, professional expertise, and a dynamic work environment that champions entrepreneurial spirit, hands-on responsibility, and real opportunity for career development, we want to hear from you!

Lactalis Heritage Dairy: inviting you to share with us your STORY, your PASSION, and your EXPERTISE.

From your PASSION to ours

This role is responsible for initiating and executing the contracts and supply agreements for Packaging materials to meet the overall requirements and expectations across North America. The role will be responsible for providing local purchasing support to ensure the plant locations are able to identify, develop and maximize relationships with Suppliers and the Value Chain. The role will provide packaging support for new launches, Line extensions and Process optimization. The achievement of the budget objectives, cost saving programs, and integration activities planned without compromising quality, service or delivery or plant flexibility is paramount.

From your EXPERTISE to ours

Key responsibilities for this position include:

• Support Lactalis North America's business units
• Through in-depth knowledge and analysis of key cost drivers, develop North American/Global sourcing strategies for the categories owned. This will include site visits to evaluate potential suppliers and will include input from key stakeholders such as the Plants, Marketing, Packaging Development, and Quality & R&D.
• Responsible for the research and compiling of all purchasing information including price history, quality, and service etc. used to evaluate new and existing Suppliers
• Responsible for obtaining from the supplier pertinent regulatory materials e.g. Letters of Guarantee, FDA info, Specifications, Quality requirements etc.
• Responsible for the preparation of RFX proposals, negotiating pricing contracts, analyzing and summarizing all responses for the preparation of the supply agreement/contract recommendation for Director, Corporate Purchasing & North American VP Purchasing approval.
• Responsible for fulfilling requests for quotes through Packaging Services and/or Marketing
• In conjunction with Legal and the Director, Corporate Purchasing facilitate preparation of the contracts/supply agreements
• Manage Category suppliers to proactively identify opportunities
• Establish annual savings targets and follow up through monthly KPIs. Complete monthly reports regarding Savings, Value Analysis and Negotiation to be provided to the Director, Corporate Purchasing.
• Work closely with the Project Managers and the Packaging Services team to either lead or support Cost Savings and Value initiatives.
• Manage overall supplier relationship activities for the North American Categories owned to mitigate risk, improve quality, performance and add value
• Manage transversal communication and activities with global purchasing organization
• Serve as the Purchasing lead to support cross-functional teams for effective project execution on new launches, Line extensions and Process optimization.
• Provide recommendations to Director, Purchasing for Budget Assumptions
• Prepare Budgets with input on the Budget Assumptions from the Director, Corporate Purchasing
• Complete monthly validation on pricing fluctuations identified through Purchase Price Variance PPV reports
• Review and approve Vendor pricelists and pricing grids for upload to Prism/SAP
• Assist Plant Replenishers by managing escalated quality concerns related to packaging suppliers, including compensation claims identified through NCR's
• Assist the Plants by managing all day to day Plant concerns related to supply, artwork release, delivery etc. escalated by the Replenishment function
• Participate as an active member of the Strategic Sourcing team, sharing purchasing strategies, supporting teamwork, savings initiatives, joint learning and development initiative
• Responsible for communicating changes in purchasing policies and procedures
• Support the plant locations to have consistent practices to enable the locations to consolidate purchases with our suppliers for maximum advantage of available volume discounts
• Continually assess Suppliers to ensure that our company receives competitive pricing, quality, and service

From your STORY to ours

Qualified applicants will contribute the following:

• Bachelor's Degree from four-year college or university in business or a business related field
• 5+ years of related experience in purchasing/strategic sourcing. Consumer Packaged Goods/Food Manufacturing experience strongly preferred.
• 5+ years relevant experience including technical packaging knowledge (Paper experience is preferred but not mandatory)
• Project Management experience is preferred
• Supporting budget process
• Experience working cross functionally with a variety of stakeholders across multiple locations.
• Up to 25% travel required.
• French languages speaker is preferred but not mandatory

Lactalis Heritage Dairy is an equal employment opportunity employer. We will not discriminate against applicants with regard to any legally-recognized basis including, but not limited to: veteran status, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, sexual orientation, and physical or mental disabilities.