Supplier Management, Contract Negotiation, Operations, Supply Chain Management, Procurement, Product Quality, Quality Control, Quality Processes, Citrus, Fresh Produce
Job description
IntroductionFarmlend is on a mission to build the infrastructure that powers global agriculture trade.
In the future world we enable, growers will ship high-quality products to retailers, farm sustainably and protect the environment and be paid fairly. Farmlend will orchestrate and manage these food supply chains, handling sourcing, communication, financing, payments, logistics and quality.
Farmlend is backed by some of the worlds top investors, including LocalGlobe, QED and Entrepreneur First, who have invested in the likes of Wise, Klarna, Citymapper and Robinhood.
Were looking for a talented and mission-driven Global Purchasing Manager to build and manage our global supplier network, as well as be our lead Citrus expert in the company.
What youll do
- You will lead on building our network of suppliers across Sub-Saharan Africa (top priority) as well as Europe, Northern Africa and Latin America.
- You will approach, vet, and onboard new suppliers, with a focus on packing houses and growers, for our current core products (pomes and citrus).
- You will negotiate contracts and agreements with new suppliers, including securing competitive prices and securing claims.
- You will manage supplier delivery times, logistics, and quality processes with the support of the Operations team.
- You will cover quality control when needed and train QC resources (at source and at destination) on your product of expertise (citrus).
- You will work with the Buyer sales team to understand market trends, demand & requirements.
- You will be our citrus expert and will support the COO in drafting, refining and executing on the procurement and sales strategy for citrus globally.
- You are a citrus expert and have a proven track record of buying citrus for 7+ years. You might have also worked with suppliers of other products in your career (preferably pomes, berries, grapes or kiwi).
- You have a very strong network of citrus suppliers (preferably integrated growers and packing houses) in Sub-Saharan Africa and a good network of suppliers in Europe, Northern Africa and Latin America.
- Youre an entrepreneur at heart, and youre not afraid (but instead you are excited) to build everything from scratch. You are a self-starter, you take initiative and get things done.
- You think about the big picture and strive to understand why things should be built and how they fit into the broader puzzle.
- You know how to switch gears, changing from going on the offensive and hacking your way to a solution, to playing defence and solidifying what youve built and setting up processes for scale.
- You have great communication skills in both written and oral formats.
- You speak English fluently. You might also speak Afrikaans, Spanish and/or Arabic.
- You have a car, and you can travel or support with sales, out-of-country quality control, and/or global procurement.
- Bonus points
- You have a network of distributors in GCC or India we could sell to.
