Procurement Category Manager, Food & Agriculture at The Clorox Company in Roswell, Georgia

Procurement Category Manager For Food Ingredients And Agricultural Products

The Clorox Company is seeking an experienced and dynamic Procurement Category Manager for Food Ingredients and Agricultural Products to join our Global Procurement team. In this strategic role, you will lead global sourcing strategies for a $140M-$170M raw material portfolio that fuels multiple brands within segments exceeding $3 billion in sales. As the category expert, you will collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive supply continuity, value optimization, innovation, and sustainability by leveraging market intelligence and supplier relationships to inform sourcing and risk mitigation strategies. Other key responsibilities include commodity hedging and forecasting, supplier negotiations, and leadership of cross-functional sourcing initiatives to enable growth and resilience in a dynamic global marketplace.

In this role, you will:

• Lead, support, and drive procurement strategies for the Food Ingredients & Agricultural Products raw material category across brands, including Cost, Supply Robustness, Innovation, and Sustainability.
• Translate business strategies into an aligned procurement category strategy. Act as the category subject matter expert.
• Interact with internal senior management and external personnel at all levels of the organization on matters requiring coordination between organizations (includes creating/maintaining strategic supplier relationships, managing/resolving systemic supplier issues, assessing Supplier's capabilities, and presenting risk, etc.)
• Actively lead the design, execution, and implementation of procurement tools and techniques to deliver value for the organization.
• Lead the identification and execution of projects to improve value delivery across the spend portfolio.
• Lead key strategic relationship with suppliers by providing insights on how to best develop and leverage supplier capabilities to meet business needs.
• Proactively identify continuous improvement opportunities to advance the category such as design to value, cost models, and process mapping.
• Monitor market dynamics, supplier competitive landscape, standards, and pricing/costing strategy for categories to understand continuous improvement opportunities and to influence business direction.
• Act as the liaison between R&D and Procurement, ensuring the needs and wants of the business are reflected into the category strategies and executed as planned.
• Support actions required to address P2P issues, such as payments and invoices.

What we look for:

• 6+ years of experience in a global, matrixed environment sourcing direct materials (Raw Materials, Packaging)
• Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university, preferably Business, Agribusiness, Economics/Agricultural Economics, Food Science, Engineering, Natural Sciences, or related fields
• Experience operating in a manufacturing environment
• Experience providing recommendations and updates to/interacting with senior leadership
• Experience with Sourcing/Procurement tools and methodologies, including RFPs, Cost Models/Should Cost/Clean Sheet, Negotiations, and Contracts
• Working knowledge of commodity hedging (preferably agricultural commodities)
• Leadership - Demonstrated experience driving positive results through teams in a challenging and fast-paced environment. Assertive and diplomatic, self-directed, able to manage up and down the organization effectively, and willing to hold self and others accountable. Ability to drive change and breakthrough performance improvement across a team. Sets or influences direction beyond own area of responsibility. Drives performance improvement across company
• Commercial acumen - Ability to leverage procurement tools to deliver financial results
• Analytical Thinking/Problem Solving - Sorts through complex issues and proposes path to solution. Integrates information from different sources and can evaluate, interpret, and communicate it properly. Strong data analysis skills. Comfortable drawing conclusions and making recommendations with ambiguous or incomplete data
• Initiative - Identifies opportunities and drives to resolution. Sets high standards of performance for self and others. Self-starter, eager to drive improvement and change. Seeks out opportunities to learn about developments in industries and markets within area of opportunity
• Collaboration/Responsiveness - Enjoys and thrives working with others. Able to respond promptly to urgencies. Values diversity of thought. Incorporates others' ideas into decision making
• Communication - Excellent English verbal and written skills with ability to craft message to fit intended audience at all levels within an organization both internally and externally. Experience managing and strategically influencing stakeholders and driving accountability
• Agreement Negotiation - Able to understand and negotiate supplier agreements
• Systems - Strong knowledge of MS Office, particularly PowerPoint and Excel, and MRP systems (SAP preferred)
• Travel - ability to travel up to 25%

Workplace type:

• Hybrid - 3 days in the office, 2 days WFH