Company Profile

Established in 2012, Star Shea Ltd. is a social business dedicated to commercialize shea nuts and butter directly supplied by the Star Shea Network, a federation of rural Ghanaian women involved in informal shea processing. Its mission is to empower these informal shea women producers and provide them with access to the formal economy.

To accomplish this mission, StarShea Ltd. has the following objectives:

• Reinforce and expand the Star Shea Network (SSN), a national association of shea producers established as part of the “Shea Value Chain Reinforcement Project”, a project implemented by PlaNet Finance and supported by SAP, the European Union and the French Development Agency, to achieve economies of scale
• Facilitate the production of premium quality shea nuts and butter through the SSN by providing the necessary quality control and training
• Develop sustainable market outlets and a market strategy to sustain the business and thus the livelihoods of SSN members
• Diversify and help stabilize the women’s sources of revenue by including shea nuts and shea butter to their income stream.
• StarShea Ltd. is positioned as a “reliable and sustainable supplier of economic quantities of consistently high quality, traceable and ethically sourced shea kernels and natural butter”.

StarShea Ltd target is to reach 35 000 women within 2018 to reach breakeven.

StarShea Ltd is a social business, ie the management is evaluated on:

• the capacity to increase women’s revenue on a long term perspective
• the number of women benefiting from the service provided

Job Description

Job summary:

The Supply Chain Manager (SCM) is in charge of determining a strategy with Operations manager and implementing for;

• The transport of nuts and butter purchased from the women of StarShea Network in order to ensure safe and on-time delivery of the goods to the clients.
• Negotiate all transport/freight related charges for nuts/butter on-behalf of StarShea
• Ensuring the availability of the equipment needed on the field for operation (packaging, safety tools, equipment etc.)

He/she is in charge of a procurement strategy and selection of selected suppliers for all key service providers and equipment linked to production (i.e. warehouses, transport, packaging, (boxes, jute bags), loading, internal transport, butter equipment etc.)

• Selection of service providers and suppliers.
  • Identifies several candidates for each equipment / service needed
  • Organizes benchmarks with other industries
  • Prepares contracts, MOU in order to optimize volume, costs, efficiency of service
  • Negotiate prices and with a target of reducing unit costs of the budget
• Organizes the availability of goods needed for field work
  • Plans the need with the field team
  • Organizes purchase and delivery on time according to production
• Organizes the transport of sales during season
  • Negotiates the trucks at the time needed by operations (synching with operational needs of StarShea)
  • Ensures proper understanding of deals (destinations, point of picking, time line, quality of truck, cleaning record, contacts, fees/charges etc.)
  • Organize efficient payment systems StarShea finance department
  • Follows up to ensure safe delivery-checking presence of truck at every point on from ordering the truck, loading to up to the point of delivery
  • Reports to operation manager on daily basis on status of trucks

Reporting line

• Directly reports to Operation Manager
• Indirect/Dotted reporting lines
  • Collaborates closely with Field team, Team leaders and Shea Coordinators to supply their needs
  • For all administrative stuff: per diem, technical support, administrative questions he refers to Finance team
  • To be determined according to the profile experience

Benefits

• Health individual insurance 600 GHS / year, + death and invalidity insurance
• Motorbike, laptop,  smartphone, 2 professional lines

Required Skills or Experience

• Accountability and thoroughness in budget management
• Seriousness in reporting and control
• Proactive and taking initiative
• Inventive in finding solutions to optimize field needs

Good negotiation skills