Procurement Manager - Tea Buying & Blending at LIPTON Teas and Infusions

Your role

The Procurement Manager, Tea Buying and Blending at Lipton Teas and Infusions leads the technical and commercial aspects of blend creation, ensuring each product aligns with Lipton’s signature taste, quality, cost, and sustainability standards. You will oversee raw material sourcing for blends and work closely with R&I, Procurement, Supply Chain, and Quality teams to deliver consistent, innovative, and responsible products for Egypt and Arabia markets.

Your Key Tasks:

• Design, manage, and refine tea blends (black, green, specialty) in partnership with Tea buying office in key sourcing locations R&I and marketing .
• Co-ordinate all supplier value addition activities to ensure end to end product consistency as per market requirement.
• Ensure blends consistently deliver the Lipton signature flavor across batches, considering terroir, seasonality, and supplier variability.
• Infuse knowledge and expertise, including better understanding of the process, should cost model, supplier, competitor and market intelligence to maximise values of the spends and drive value creation
• Conduct organoleptic evaluation of incoming teas—assessing appearance, aroma, taste, and mouthfeel to meet blend specifications.
• Regularly and proactively conduct the blend performance comparison with the markets in your scope of responsibility and within the wider tea category team.
• Execute sourcing and value addition strategies, optimizing blend cost and. negotiation tools.
• Deliver cost, cash - inventory, quality and supply resilience
• Issue blend schedules to manufacturing units, aligning demand forecasts and production requirements.
• Maintain static data in Lipton’s operating systems, manage blend documentation, and ensure accuracy in master data.
• Monitor real-time blend and stock performance
• Manage local tea purchasing in Egypt and Arabia ensuring purchasing agreement in place and compliance to Source–to–Pay process
• Comply to Responsible sourcing and Sourcing Sustainability policy
• Support growth agenda and innovation pipeline
• Provide timely input to cost estimation, budgeting for both business plan revision and product launch
• Managing and embedding changes
• Stakeholder Management and key interfaces
• Collaborate and manage stakeholders within Procurement function and other Cross Functional Teams
• Build network with industrial peers, tea associations, and external stakeholders
• Engage externally representing Lipton Teas and Infusions in key multi stakeholder forums.

Skills and Experience

• Minimum 5 years of experience in tea/coffee blending, sensory evaluation, or procurement in food/beverage industry. Strong sensory assessment capability and commercial. You possess strong academic record, with minimum bachelor’s degree in business administration, food science, or food engineering, and are eager to make a positive impact.
• Excellence in managing and measuring work.
• Passion for precision and consistency in tea quality
• Action oriented and Drive for results
• Great analytical skill
• Towering strength in stakeholder engagement
• Negotiation
• Excellent Business and Commercial Acumen
• Language Requirement: Proficiency in English communication.