Expert Interview with … Thomas Roemer, Covestro
We had the pleasure of chatting to Thomas Roemer, Chief Procurement Officer at Covestro ahead of his appearance as a speaker at ProcureCon EU 2022, about the best opportunities for procurement to add value right now.
On a scale of 1-10, how challenging is your role right now? (10 being the most)
10. It’s currently a perfect storm of supply chain interruptions, hiking energy prices and inflationary pressure. All this comes on top of the transformation of the chemical industry toward a circular economy and climate neutrality. However, this makes the job not only demanding, but also very rewarding. This is because procurement is currently absolutely critical to the success of any company.
Where do you see the best opportunities for procurement to add value right now?
Procurement should currently be the focus of interest for every company. We can increase our value contribution even further by increase our business proximity, i.e. moving even closer to the decisions of the sales departments. This holds true for “classic” topics like cost oversight and supply security, but is also especially true for areas like product carbon footprint and supplier enabled innovation.
Are your sustainability initiatives being interrupted by global instability and cost pressure?
No, quite the contrary. Our vision at Covestro is to be fully circular. Based on this, we have formulated very ambitious targets and aim to be operationally climate neutral as early as 2035. The current developments around fossils only underline and accelerate this north star of our actions. We see a lot of ongoing developments and also that green solutions become more cost competitive.
What advice would you give to someone moving into procurement?
Firstly, that this is a great move! In few other departments does one gain such broad insight into a company’s value chain and at the same have such a huge impact on the P&L. And then my advice would be to collaborate both internally and externally. Based on the clear understanding of what differentiates the business, seek the suppliers with capabilities to support this differentiation.
What qualities are you looking for in new recruits currently?
Curious, courageous and colorful are our values at Covestro. And this is also what we’re looking for in our new recruits in addition to a strong team spirit!
You can hear directly from Thomas in his session at ProcureCon EU:
Case Study: Scope 3 Emissions: How to harmonise product carbon footprint calculations and share in a joint industry initiative.
To find out more, view the full agenda here.