Job Description
Category Buyer (Packaging)
Butternut Box is looking for an experienced Packaging Category Buyer to join our Procurement Team. In this role, you will be responsible for an International & varied supply base, purchasing across a range of materials including plastics and corrugated board.
This is a high-profile role, playing a pivotal part in building our long-term packaging strategy, reducing costs, driving our sustainability agenda, protecting the business against risk and bringing new products to launch. This is an extremely dynamic role flexing across our operations and across our 5 international regions (which continues to grow each year). This person will work closely with the teams in Production, Product Development, Technical, Fulfillment, Brand, Supply Chain and international teams, giving the unique opportunity to have a full view of our total supply chain.
You are dynamic, entrepreneurial and a self-starter who works proactively, and is excited about the opportunity to work in a rapidly scaling business! We are looking for someone to come in and hit the ground running with strong experience working with various materials in a manufacturing setting, bringing fresh ideas and enthusiasm to the current Procurement team.
You will report into the Senior Buyer who heads the Packaging and Third Party Manufacturing categories and will work alongside an energetic team. Your focus will be to take full ownership of the £10m Packaging category spend with a focus on creating long-term strategic partners, onboarding, forecasting our packaging spend and supporting new product development. We are looking for someone to help drive our sustainability agenda and ensure our products are fit for purpose as we continue to scale. This person is ideally CIPS qualified and works well under pressure with the flexibility to adapt to changing Business requirements and priorities. This may mean managing alternative & additional spend categories as the business continues to scale, in line with the teams development and the greatest needs at the time. International travel & over night stay will be required on an ad hoc basis to our suppliers, trade shows and our 'box office' in London. The role is hybrid working with weekly presence at our production site in Blyth (S81 8HG)
Key responsibilities:
Goals & KPIs
- Directly build the long-term packaging strategy cross-functionally to deliver value & quality & minimise risk
- Working with the Operations team to identify and deliver continuous efficiency and/or cost improvement opportunities
- Challenge and manage suppliers to deliver the required standards and measure their performance against agreed objectives, putting in place corrective actions where necessary.
- Manage our continuously growing supplier base, ensuring we are building a network of strategic partner suppliers
- Be accountable for the packaging budget. Forecasting & reporting monthly costs and ensuring cost stacks are always correct.
NPD & Sustainability
- Keep a close eye on future market trends and appetites, attending key trade shows domestically and internationally to keep up-to-date knowledge of packaging innovation & sustainability developments.
- Deliver on our sustainability and environmental agenda.
- Work with suppliers to translate concepts into robust, viable commercial packaging solutions
- Use reporting tools and communicate regularly on the progress of projects
- Undertaking the full supplier sourcing & onboarding process through to contract award, including pre-qualification, evaluation of 'best value', co-ordination of both commercial and qualitative assessments, credit checks, negotiation of terms and conditions
A bit about you:
- Experienced working with packaging
- Essential- experience working with PA/PE, PE products or corrugated board
- Essential- experience working with packaging in a manufacturing setting
- Essential- experience working with complex packaging cost models
- Someone with a deep, end-to-end understanding of the packaging & printing process, from idea conception to launching a new product to market.
- Packaging technical & regulatory knowledge with a passion for sustainability
- E-commerce (direct to consumer) packaging experience \*preferred
- Exceptional stakeholder management & alignment abilities
- Organised with a very keen eye for detail and the ability to work under pressure
- Flexible with a strong ability to adapt to changing priorities and needs of the business
- Commercial awareness; you should be comfortable in leading Supplier negations and able to take a holistic view of the impact of your role in the business
- Ability to travel Internationally including overnight stays
- Passion for e-commerce and dogs!
A bit about us.
At Butternut, we put the food back into dog food. We believe dogs deserve to eat the healthiest, most natural and tastiest food with none of the nasties. That's why we make freshly prepared dog food. Cooked like you would at home. Delivered in perfect portions.
We want to change the pet food industry for the better helping dogs live healthier, happier and longer lives whilst leaving humans smiling after every interaction.
We have come a long way since our co-founders (Kevin & David) hand-delivered the first Butternut Box. We are on a mission to feed even more pets in the UK and our operations team and creating a robust and scalable supply chain have a vital part to play in this. That's where you come in.
- Competitive salary
- 25 days holiday per year (pro-rated) plus bank holidays and an additional day for every year of service
- £500 annual learning & development budget
- Flexible working arrangements (guideline is 3 days office vs 2 days home working)
- Private Medical Insurance with Vitality Health Care
- Monthly Pizza days
- Pension with NEST
- Employee discount on Butternut Box for your dog
- Lots of office dogs (Dexter, Cleo, Marshal, Cali, Ronnie, Harvey and many more….)
‼ A few things to note:
- We aim to respond to all applicants personally. Our recruitment team is small so do bear with us.
- Butternut Box is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity and inclusion. We welcome people of different nationalities, backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives.
- We're not afraid of putting extra weight on candidates from underrepresented groups. We want strong, diverse teams built from different backgrounds, experiences, and identities. We're ready for the ongoing work that goes into building an inclusive, supportive place for you to do the best work of your career.
- There is no specific date this role will go down but we normally experience a high volume of applications so if you are interested we suggest applying as soon as possible.
- We won't be using external recruitment agencies for support on this role.
- Whilst there are 3 job adverts currently live, we have 2 roles available in the Procurement team which we are looking to fill, 1x senior buyer 1x category buyer, categories will be distributed based on expertise of the two candidates between Packaging and 3rd party products
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