Sugar & Sweeteners Category Head

Want to help us bring happiness to the world? Want to join an ambitious and fast growing global biscuits and confectionery business investing heavily in iconic global brands, infrastructure and people? Then this is the place for you. As proud bakers and chocolatiers and custodians of iconic global brands, we don’t compromise on the quality of ingredients in our products or on the people we hire.

We are looking for entrepreneurial spirits who share our passion for bringing happiness to our consumers and who embody our Winning Traits. To succeed at pladis you need to be purpose‑led, resilient and positive to succeed here because we expect pace and agility, we insist on collaboration and demand accountability. If that is your thing, then pladis offers global ambition, a clear Vision and roadmap for success, challenge, and unrivalled opportunities to learn and make an impact.

The Procurement team is made of 110 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 5 regions (UK & Ireland, Western Europe & Emerging markets, Middle East – North Africa – India, Turkey – Eastern Europe – Central Asia, and North America).

Within Global Categories, the Sugar & Sweeteners Category Head reports directly to the Raw Materials Categories Lead, who in turn reports into the CPO. They drive (in alignment with Regional Procurement teams) the Sugar & Sweeteners Category (200 M£ spend). The Category includes beet sugar, cane sugar and all other sweetening agents (glucose, fructose, aspartame, maltodextrin…).

• Designing, formalising & implementing a 2 to 3 years forward sourcing strategy, after ensuring full alignment with the business
• Implementing all Procurement‑driven processes & tools within his/her categories
• Building strong relationships across all pladis functions (R&D, Operations, Engineering, Finance, Marketing), influencing pladis strategy in relation with sugars & sweets (competitivity, innovation, sustainability) and working with all key stakeholders to accelerate project implementation
• 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
• Lead AOP (budgeting process) for commodity assumptions.
• 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 on its path to carbon neutrality, 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 Category, they will be responsible to:
• 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 nutritionally‑better sources to reach the sweetening power required by consumers (needs analysis)
• Map the market to identify new suppliers in those strategic areas, able to challenge our incumbent suppliers (market analysis)
• Execute our Commodities cover strategy (mostly on raw sugar), with the support of the Procurement Head for Financial Hedging when done through financial instruments.
• Link with Procurement teams in Regions to…