Department Purpose
Suggested Team Structure
Job Description: Buyer - Non-Ferrous Metals
- Position: Manager - Metal Procurement
- Primary Responsibility: Procurement strategy, margins, supplier network, approvals, and team performance
- Senior Buyer: High-value supplier accounts, pricing, negotiations, and volume planning
- Buyer/Procurement Executive: Daily sourcing, quotations, supplier visits, and purchase closure
- Yard/Material Inspector: Material identification, grading, weighing, contamination checks, and quality reports
- Procurement Coordinator: Purchase orders, documentation, logistics coordination, MIS, and payment follow-up
- Commercial/Market Analyst: Market prices, landed cost, competitor rates, and profitability analysis
- Job title: Buyer / Procurement Executive – Non-Ferrous Metals
- Department: Procurement / Commercial
- Reports to: Procurement Manager or Business Head
- Location: Recycling plant, collection yard, or corporate office
- Experience: Approximately 2-7 years in scrap buying, metal trading, recycling, foundry, manufacturing procurement, or commodity sourcing
- Education: Graduate degree; technical or commercial qualification preferred
- Travel: Regular travel to suppliers, industrial units, dismantlers, stockyards, and collection points
3.1 Supplier Development and Sourcing
- Identify and onboard suppliers of copper, aluminium, brass, zinc, lead, cables, motors, radiators, alloys, and other recyclable metal materials.
- Develop relationships with manufacturers, engineering companies, auto-component units, electrical and cable companies, demolition contractors.
- Maintain a supplier database with material category, location, monthly volume, payment terms, credit history, and compliance status.
- Generate recurring supply from existing vendors and reduce dependence on a limited number of suppliers.
- Conduct supplier visits and understand generation, segregation, storage, and dispatch processes.
3.2 Material Inspection and Grading
- Inspect incoming material and verify declared grade, quantity, and condition.
- Identify mixed, contaminated, insulated, oxidised, wet, oil-contaminated, or non-conforming material.
- Check recovery potential for complex or mixed scrap before finalising the purchase price.
- Coordinate with yard, quality, laboratory, and production teams for sampling and recovery assessment.
- Classify material correctly as high-grade, commercial-grade, mixed, or low-recovery material.
3.3 Pricing and Negotiation
- Monitor market prices for copper, aluminium, brass, zinc, and other relevant commodities.
- Calculate purchase prices after considering recovery, processing cost, freight, taxes, handling loss, rejection risk, and expected selling price.
- Negotiate rates, quantity, quality tolerances, payment terms, loading conditions, and delivery schedules.
- Purchase material within approved rate and margin guidelines.
- Escalate exceptional or high-value transactions for management approval.
- Evaluate recoverable metal value and net landed cost rather than relying only on gross weight.
3.4 Purchase Execution
- Prepare quotations, purchase orders, rate confirmations, and supplier agreements.
- Coordinate vehicle placement, loading, route planning, weighment, and delivery to the plant or yard.
- Verify weighbridge slips, invoices, e-way bills, tax documents, and dispatch records.
- Ensure that no vehicle is dispatched without approved commercial terms and required documentation.
- Coordinate with accounts for payment processing and resolve quantity, quality, or deduction disputes.
3.5 Quality and Commercial Control
- Compare supplier declaration with actual receipt quality.
- Record shortages, excess moisture, contamination, attachments, and grade deviations.
- Implement transparent rejection and deduction rules.
- Track supplier-wise rejection, recovery, material loss, and claim history.
- Support supplier audits and performance reviews.
- Prevent duplicate billing, unauthorised purchases, fictitious suppliers, and rate manipulation.
3.6 Compliance and Responsible Sourcing
- Maintain supplier KYC, GST, PAN, bank details, ownership documents, and applicable registrations.
- Verify whether the supplier is authorised or legally eligible to deal in the relevant material.
- Ensure procurement complies with applicable environmental, waste-management, transport, tax, and company policies.
- For e-waste, battery waste, end-of-life vehicles, or metal-bearing waste, coordinate with compliance to confirm applicable authorisations and documentation.
- Do not purchase material of suspicious origin, stolen infrastructure, unidentified cables, or material without adequate ownership and source documents.
3.7 Reporting and Market Intelligence
- Submit daily purchase, rate, supplier, stock, and dispatch reports.
- Maintain a live purchase pipeline showing enquiries, quotations, negotiations, expected volumes, and closures.
- Provide weekly updates on market movement, supplier behaviour, competitor rates, and supply risks.
- Share volume and purchase-cost forecasts with production and sales teams.
- Maintain accurate records in Excel, ERP, or CRM/procurement software.
Daily Responsibilities
- Review market rates and internal buying limits.
- Check pending supplier enquiries and expected arrivals.
- Contact existing and prospective suppliers.
- Obtain photographs, videos, grade details, quantity, and location for new material.
- Prepare cost and recovery calculations.
- Negotiate and close approved purchases.
- Coordinate vehicle placement and loading.
- Verify weighment and material receipt.
- Record quality differences, deductions, and supplier disputes.
- Update the purchase tracker and submit the daily report.
Skills and Competencies
- Knowledge of non-ferrous scrap grades and metal identification.
- Understanding of recovery, yield, contamination, moisture, and processing losses.
- Strong negotiation and supplier relationship-management skills.
- Ability to calculate landed cost and purchase profitability.
- Familiarity with commodity-price movements and regional scrap markets.
- Knowledge of GST, e-way bills, weighment, invoices, and procurement documentation.
- Ability to use Excel, ERP, procurement software, and reporting dashboards.
- Strong communication, follow-up, field-verification, and problem-solving skills.
- High integrity in supplier selection, pricing, quality assessment, and payment coordination.
Sample Performance Targets
- Achieve at least 95% of the approved monthly procurement-volume target.
- Maintain purchases within approved price and margin limits.
- Keep quality-related deductions or rejection below the approved threshold.
- Add a defined number of qualified suppliers every month.
- Maintain a high repeat-supplier ratio for strategic materials.
- Complete supplier KYC and purchase documentation before material dispatch.
- Ensure timely vehicle placement and delivery for committed purchases.
- Submit daily procurement MIS and monthly supplier-performance reports on schedule.
- Resolve quality, quantity, and payment disputes within the defined turnaround time.
- Avoid unauthorised, undocumented, or suspicious material procurement.