Requirements: English
Company: Bakker & Partners
Region: Ghent , Flanders
For our customer we are looking for a Buyer Ingredients.
Our customer, Vandemoortele, is a leading European food group that manufactures and sells high-quality food products. Our customer is European leader in several food categories such as bakery products. The headquarters is in Ghent with 29 locations in Europe and outside.
Your role
As Buyer Ingredients you are in charge for your category of ingredients (fillings, compounds & coatings, eggs, decoration, and nuts), which means you are responsible for maintaining supplier relations, follow-up of relevant market information about ingredients, suppliers, and fairs. Furthermore, you follow-up market trends and possible innovations. In close cooperation with your colleagues from QA, R&D, sales, suppliers, etc. you propose new optimizations.
Your key responsibilities
Relationship management:
- You negotiate and conclude price agreements and contracts with suppliers based on VDM needs.
- You translate internal requirements into supplier agreements for existing and new ingredients.
- You follow up on changes in specifications, packaging, and sustainability issues in coordination with internal teams.
- You determine and negotiate price, quality, and optimal order quantities.
- You ensure supplier compliance with codes of conduct and internal procedures.
- You organize supplier meetings based on segmentation.
- You collaborate with internal departments (NPD, Sales, QA, Sites) to ensure optimal supplier alignment.
Gather relevant market and supplier information for your category
- You monitor trends, analyse markets, and define VDMs position.
- You identify valuable new ingredients and assess suppliers.
- You attend trade fairs and report key findings.
- You select and evaluate international suppliers based on quality and financial stability.
- You identify partnership opportunities.
- You integrate sustainability topics like SBTi and carbon footprint reduction into supplier discussions.
Propose and implement optimisation exercises and send out tenders per ingredient group
- You prepare and propose optimization exercises (cost reduction) to the purchasing manager
- You request offers and relevant information from suppliers to prepare tenders.
- You analyse supplier responses and implement the most optimal results, communicating both internally and externally.
Business Support
- You conduct spend analysis of existing suppliers for price negotiations.
- You prepare and execute the annual budget exercise.
- You perform the annual vendor rating for ingredients and coordinate the action plan.
- You serve as a point of contact for structural complaints or out-of-stock issues and follow up on claims.
- You act as a backup for other administrative support tasks.
Are you the one were looking for?
- You hold a masters degree in engineering or economics and have 3-5 years of experience in procurement. Experience in the food industry is a plus
- Above all you are ambitious, energetic, driven and open to receive and give challenges. Your drive and enthusiasm will motivate you to go the extra mile in engaging others
- As a food lover, you are passionate by food
- Your excellent communication and persuasion skills enable you to motivate, drive and engage your internal (R&D, production, purchase, logistics, master data, ) and external stakeholders
- You are stress resistant, pragmatic, problem-solving (thinking out of the box)
- You can work together on major projects, and you like to take ownership
- You have excellent interpersonal and communication skills, written and verbal, in English. Knowledge of French/Dutch is a plus
- You are willing to travel 10% of your time (short trips and fairs).
Whats in for you?
- You will join our big little family: Our associates are the beating heart of our company they bring the flavour to our organisation. We cherish each member, prioritising their well-being and supporting their professional journey.
- We value you as a person: At Vandemoortele we value each one of our associates and recognise their unique contributions to team successes. You will have flexible working hours and the opportunity to work from home 50% of the time. We also invite you to join our sports and wellbeing activities!
- We care for your future and we support your professional journey: We believe in the power of our associates and the value of their actions and support their career aspirations by offering internal mobility and promo