Suppliers

With more than 8,000 employees and operations in more than 50 countries, Yara needs all sorts of supplies, all the time.

Procurement is organized through the Upstream Business Segment in Yara.  A Central Unit is responsible for overall strategy, processes, support and tools, and also coordinates the procurement network in the Baltic Rim region, France, Germany, Italy, Benelux, Trinidad, Brazil, Canada and Scandinavia.

Finding the optimal balance between local presence and central coordinated activities is vital.

Procurement needs to be close to its customers (production sites), to understand specific local needs and build local market-knowledge. Procurement strategies often need to be developed based on these specific local circumstances. The procurement function also needs to focus on identifying synergies on a cross-site and/or cross-regional level and therefore needs to keep the well-being of several internal clients in mind and set procurement strategies based on a more global perspective.

The Yara Procurement function meets both these important objectives so that optimal solutions are achieved while safeguarding quality of supply. One of the ways to implement this is through local procurement presence at each site, thereby ensuring that local needs are respected and local market intelligence maintained.

In addition to the local-central split, several people throughout the procurement organization are “category team leads.“ These leads can physically sit within a local procurement organization, but still have a central responsibility in coordinating procurement activities for a category across different sites and thus ensuring potential synergies are identified and captured.

Yara Upstream’s procurement staff is ready to review opportunities with suppliers, whether local or central, and is thereby able to act in a consistent manner towards suppliers, identify cross-site opportunities and communicate those opportunities through the central team or the category leads.