Jan Paul van der Velde has a 35-year career in (inbound) supply chain and procurement. After graduating as Mechanical Engineer, he joined Philips Electronics in their Procurement Trainee program. Subsequent he moved to Frito Lay, where he did hold European Management positions in Supply Chain and Procurement (Netherlands, UK, Poland and Switzerland) with a major focus on managing the procurement and supply chain activities for the frequent acquisitions and integration activities.
After a few years at Heineken, where he was globally responsible for all packaging materials, Jan Paul joined Quest, the world fastest growing and most innovative Flavours and Fragrances company. After Quest was acquired by Givaudan, Jan Paul took a management board position at Flint Group (€ 3bn, 46 countries, 200 locations), the leading ink producer for the Packaging and Publication markets (PE owned). At Flint Group, Jan Paul was in the Board responsible for IT, Procurement, Regulatory and Sustainability.
After 10 years at Flint Group, Jan Paul decided to start his own procurement consultancy firm, focussing in advising private equity, mainly in due diligence. Next to PE also procurement transformations were managed for larger corporations as well as interim management.
In 2019, after an initial interim assignment, Jan Paul committed himself to do a major procurement transformation / digitalisation project for AkzoNobel, reporting directly into the CEO. The original term was till end 2021 but given the Covid challenges Jan Paul agreed to stay until end of 2023 to manage the company through the challenging supply and cost periods, while finalising a major global end to end procurement digitalisation project.
After successful implementation of the project mid-2023, Jan Paul at his own request left AkzoNobel and returned early 2024 to his own procurement consultancy firm.
In 2011, together with Peter Cheverton (Insight Marketing and People), Jan Paul wrote a book Understanding the Professional Buyer, aimed at salespeople to deliver more sales value by better understanding buyers and their tactics. Based on this book, Jan Paul has given over 80 lectures and workshops around the world for senior salespeople to increase their selling skills.